Kelso is a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

and defunct

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

depot in the

Mojave National Preserve Mojave National Preserve is a United States National Preserve located in the Mojave Desert of San Bernardino County, California, US, between Interstate 15 in California, Interstate 15 and Interstate 40. The preserve was established October 31, ...

San Bernardino County, California San Bernardino County ( ), officially the County of San Bernardino and sometimes abbreviated as S.B. County, is a County (United States), county located in the Southern California, southern portion of the U.S. state of California, and is locat ...

, USA. It was named after railroad worker John H. Kelso, whose name was placed into a hat along with two other workers to decide the name of the town. The town was built in 1905 specifically as a railroad station along the rail line between Utah and Los Angeles, originally called "Siding 16," because of its location and nearby springs that provided abundant water. ''

Historic Spots in California ''Historic Spots in California'' is a guide to historic places in the U.S. state of California. The first edition, by Hero Eugene Rensch and Ethel Grace Rensch, was published in 1932. The book was originally sponsored by the Daughters of the Ameri ...

'' states, "At Kelso stands a beautiful Spanish-style Union Pacific Depot built about 1906, surrounded by shade trees, a welcome rarity in the hot, barren desert."

History

Starting off as what was a simple train depot in the 1920s, the town of Kelso boomed briefly to as many as 2,000 residents in the 1940s, when

borax The BORAX Experiments were a series of safety experiments on boiling water nuclear reactors conducted by Argonne National Laboratory in the 1950s and 1960s at the National Reactor Testing Station in eastern Idaho.

and

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

mines opened nearby.

Gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

and

silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

were also discovered in the nearby hills of what became known as the Kelso district. The town shrank again when the mines closed after about a decade. Kelso was a base of operations for the

San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad The Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad was a rail company in California, Nevada, and Utah in the United States, that completed and operated a railway line between its namesake cities (Salt Lake City, Utah, and Los Angeles, California), via Las ...

, connecting track of

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad is a Railroad classes, Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United Stat ...

, to which the SPLA&SL had negotiated trackage rights, with the

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the largest Class 1 railroads in the United States between 1859 and 1996. The Santa Fe was a pioneer in intermodal freight transport; at vario ...

east-west line to the south. Here, trains were watered and " helper" locomotives were attached to assist the regular trains in climbing the steep Cima Hill. The distance between

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

and the connection with the Santa Fe line at Daggett was too far for trains without a meal car, so Kelso was a convenient spot for a restaurant stop. The depot building itself was built in 1923 using a Spanish "California mission" building style. It contained boarding rooms for railroad employees and a restaurant for both employees and passengers. It also had a

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...

office and waiting room. Later, a restaurant nicknamed the "Beanery" that served home-style meals was housed in the building. The large rooms in the basement also served as a community center for local residents. About 1944 the railroad brought in an old strap-iron jail to detain local drunks. It is now on display just outside the Kelso Depot. The depot remained in operation until 1986. Left to the harsh conditions in the desert, the building began to deteriorate. By the mid-1990s the railroad was on the verge of demolishing the depot. Preservationists then stepped in to save it. In 2005, it was renovated to become the Mojave National Preserve's visitor center. The facility is currently closed for repairs.nps.gov
checked on 20 Sep 2024. During the 1970s Kelso was known as "the town without television." About 75 residents lived in Kelso, many with school age children. Television signals could not reach the town which meant that residents found other methods of recreation. However, with the advent of satellite dishes, television was eventually introduced to Kelso. The ZIP Code is 92309 and the community is inside

area codes 442 and 760 Area codes 760 and 442 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the U.S. state of California. These area codes serve an overlay complex that comprises much of the southeastern and southernmost portions of Californ ...

. The Kelso Mountains are located north of Kelso, the

Kelso Dunes Kelso Dunes, also known as the Kelso Dune Field, is the largest field of aeolian sand deposits in the Mojave Desert. The region is protected by the Mojave National Preserve and is located near the town of Baker, San Bernardino County, Califor ...

lie to the southwest, and the entire area lies within the boundary of the

. Image:Kelso railroad depot.jpg, Kelso railroad depot after repainting. Image:Kelso depot restaurant.JPG, Restored restaurant at depot. Image:Telegraph office at depot.JPG, Restored telegraph office at depot.

References

External links

Kelso Depot Floor Plan and Photo Model
{{authority control Former settlements in San Bernardino County, California Ghost towns in California Mojave National Preserve Populated places in the Mojave Desert Union Pacific Railroad Populated places established in 1905 1905 establishments in California

History

See also

References

External links