Columbia and Jamestown, CA

My husband and I have always been very fascinated by old ghost towns of the "Old West." So one plan we had when visiting family in California, was that we wanted to take the children to our favorite place to visit, Columbia and Jamestown.

We went with James' parents. First we stopped in Jamestown to visit the old Railtown Museum. James loves trains and so do the boys. Here are a few of my favorite picture there.

Here is my father-in-law looking back at the Blacksmith shop we just left.

Here he is walking hand in hand with Jamie. This one is my favorite!

Many of our favorite movies were made here. How many do you know?

Engine #2 a bit of a movie star, but I believe #32 was the biggest movies star.

Old signs. So where is our next destination?

And I wonder why they didn't want to leave!

We all really had a lot of fun in James town. The kids came home with train toys. Of course Justin got one of his favorite characters, Thomas the Train, who takes a very close second only to Bob the Builder.

Next we went to Columbia. As we were entering I almost wanted to cry. One of my favorite ghost towns was being built around. It is once again booming. It is no longer the little old ghost town in the middle of the California hills that I use to love. We parked and walked into town. What was left of it!!! I is now only one small street that is blocked off from public traffic. It use to be blocked off all the way up the hill to the grave yard and the school house! What happened? It is moments like this when I find I HATE PROGRESS! There were new buildings going up. It just wasn't the same experiance I had hoped to share with the kids. We did stop and had a picture taken in the old photo shop of my father-in-law, James and the two boys. I can't wait to see it. But I left Columbia feeling really sad. It's sad that people can't have more respect for history. Then again maybe many people consider me crazy because I want to preserve as much of it as possible, but there was miles of undeveloped hills near Columbia, why couldn't they build another town near by and leave Columbia to it beautiful history? It's sad! We only took a few pictures in Columbia. I think James and I were both taken back by what we saw of our old beautiful ghost town. We had once loved it so much that we spent the day of our Senior prom there.