Ghost Towns You Can Visit With Kids: A Family-Friendly Guide

Most ghost town advice online assumes you're the one packing a satellite communicator and budgeting for an unpaved final stretch. That's great if you're a solo explorer, but it's the wrong starting point if you're trying to figure out whether a ghost town works for a family day trip with a seven-year-old in tow. This guide flips the question: instead of "how remote and adventurous can we get," it asks "how do we get real history, a paved road, and a bathroom, all in the same afternoon." Two towns answer that reliably — Calico, California, and Jerome, Arizona — and we'll walk through exactly what makes each one work, where they differ, and what to skip until the kids are older.

What actually makes a ghost town kid-friendly

Not every ghost town on this site is a fair candidate for a family trip, and that's by design — plenty of the best sites are genuinely remote. Before picking a destination, it helps to know what you're actually screening for:

A paved or well-maintained road the whole way. No high-clearance requirement, no unpaved final stretch where a flat tire turns into the story of the trip.

Restrooms and food on-site, or close by. A ghost town with no services nearby turns a two-hour visit into a logistics project once a kid gets hungry or needs a bathroom.

A short, bounded area to explore, not miles of open desert — somewhere a family can see the highlights in an hour or two without serious hiking.

Managed hazards, not open ones. Fenced-off mine shafts and stabilized buildings instead of the open vertical shafts and collapsing structures you'd find at a truly abandoned site.

Something interactive, not just old buildings. A mine tour, a museum with hands-on exhibits, or — as you'll see below — an actual petting zoo goes a long way toward holding a kid's attention past the first ten minutes.

Manageable heat and elevation. Desert ghost towns can turn dangerous in summer heat, and we cover that in more detail in our best time to visit guide — for a family trip, lean toward the cooler months and an early start.

Calico and Jerome both clear that bar, though they clear it in different ways — one is flatter and easier for toddlers, the other asks more of small legs but pays it back with a wider range of things to actually do.

Calico, California: the easiest first trip

Calico is the site most consistently described as the most family-friendly ghost town in California, and the facts back that reputation up. It's a San Bernardino County regional park about 12 miles east of Barstow, reached via a short, paved loop road off I-15 — roughly two hours from Los Angeles or Las Vegas, which makes it realistic as a single-day round trip with kids in the car.

The town is open daily, with an entrance fee historically in the $8-for-adults, $5-for-children range — check the county park's current pricing before you go, since fees like this can shift year to year. Once inside, the Maggie Mine tour gives kids an actual mine to walk through rather than just looking at buildings from outside, and the town has shops, snack and food options, and seasonal rides that give a visit built-in pacing breaks — useful when attention spans are short. Camping is available on-site if you want to turn the day trip into an overnight.

Because the whole site sits on relatively flat ground with a paved walking surface through the main street, it's the more stroller-friendly of the two towns in this guide. If this is your family's first ghost town trip, Calico is the lower-risk place to start.

Jerome, Arizona: more of a workout, more to do

Jerome is a different kind of family trip — not harder to reach, but more physically active once you're there, and arguably richer in things for kids to actually do.

Founded in 1876, Jerome grew into Arizona's fourth-largest city during the 1920s copper boom, with roughly 15,000 residents clinging to the side of Cleopatra Hill. When the mine closed in 1953, the population collapsed to around fifty holdouts; artists and new residents resettled the empty houses through the 1960s and 70s, and today Jerome is a living town of a few hundred residents (464 at the 2020 census) that draws more than a million visitors a year. It's reached entirely by paved road — AZ-89A, which has been fully paved since 1938 — including the switchback climb over Mingus Mountain just south of town, a scenic but genuinely curvy stretch worth a slower pace with kids in the back seat.

The tradeoff for all that history is the terrain: Jerome is built on roughly a 30-degree slope, with narrow stairways and steep inclines connecting its streets. It's entirely walkable, and free public parking lots are scattered along the main streets, but plan on comfortable shoes and some uphill walking rather than a flat stroll — this is the detail that makes Jerome better suited to kids who can walk a few hundred yards uphill on their own than to a trip built around a stroller.

What you get in exchange is real variety for kids. Jerome State Historic Park, centered on the Douglas Mansion, runs a mining museum with photographs, artifacts, a video presentation, and a 3-D model of the town and its underground tunnels — concrete enough for a kid to actually picture what was happening underground. Admission runs $10 for adults, $5 for youth ages 7–13, and free for children 6 and under, with the park open daily from 9am to 4:30pm (hours shift around the winter holidays, so check ahead if you're planning a late-December visit). On weekends, a geology tour and presentation — explicitly pitched as suited to "curious minds of all ages" — adds a guided option if your kids do better with a narrator than a self-guided wander.

The bigger draw for most families is Gold King Mine & Ghost Town, a separate attraction just outside town. It's built around a genuine petting zoo — goats, chickens, turkeys, a pig, donkeys, a miniature pony, and seasonal baby chicks that kids can feed and handle directly — alongside more than 100 vintage cars and motorcycles, a working sawmill and blacksmith shop, scheduled gold panning, and a 1,270-foot mine shaft you can walk into. Admission is $12 for ages 13–79, $7 for ages 6–12, and free for kids 5 and under and adults 80 and over; it's open Wednesday through Monday year-round (closed Tuesdays), 9am to 5pm March through November and 10am to 5pm December through February. Pricing and hours are subject to change, so it's worth a quick check before you drive out. Of everything in this guide, the petting zoo at Gold King Mine is the single most reliable kid-pleaser — it turns "look at old buildings" into an actual outing.

Calico vs. Jerome: which fits your family

If you're choosing between the two, the honest answer depends on your kids' ages and legs, not which town is "better." Calico is flatter, more stroller-friendly, and the lower-effort choice for toddlers and younger kids — plan on an easy few hours and treat the Maggie Mine tour as the highlight. Jerome asks more of small legs because of the hillside streets, but pays it back with a genuine petting zoo, a hands-on mine museum, and more range of things to do across a longer visit — a better fit for school-age kids who can handle some uphill walking and want more than one thing to do in a day. Neither requires anything beyond a standard passenger vehicle and a normal paved road, which is the baseline that rules out most other sites on this list for a family trip.

What to skip until the kids are older

Not every well-known ghost town belongs on a family itinerary yet, and it's worth naming one plainly: Bodie, California sits at 8,375 feet, has no food or gas sold on-site, and its final three miles are unpaved — exactly the combination this guide screens out. It's a legitimate, rewarding trip for older kids who can handle a long day with no services, but it's a poor choice for a first family outing or for anyone under about eight. Save it for a second or third ghost town trip, once you know how your kids actually handle a full day of walking and heat.

Packing for a family day trip

The gear list here is shorter than what you'd pack for a backcountry ghost town expedition, because both Calico and Jerome have services on-site. Still worth bringing: water for everyone (more than feels necessary, especially at Calico's lower desert elevation), snacks for the drive and any gaps between meals, sun protection, and genuinely comfortable closed-toe shoes — non-negotiable at Jerome given the hills, and still the right call at Calico, where old mining-town ground is uneven even on a flat site. A stroller works fine at Calico; at Jerome, a soft carrier or simply planning for kids to walk is the more realistic choice. For a longer or more ambitious trip once you've done one of these, our gear checklist and road trip planning guide go further into what to bring.