Possum Trot

Calvin Black carved his dolls with a hatchet and a pocketknife; Ruby sewed their dresses out of old clothes. They bought this ground sight unseen from a magazine advertisement in 1953, named it with a southern word for a shortcut, and spent twenty years raising a rock shop, windmills and a Bird Cage Theater where eighty-odd near life-size figures sang in Calvin's falsetto off tape. He died in 1972, Ruby in 1980, and the place was broken up and sold. Some of the dolls are in the Smithsonian.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Calico Ghost Town — 2.1 mi
  An 1881 silver boomtown in the calico-colored hills, saved and rebuilt by the founder of Knott's Berry Farm.
• Barstow — 8.0 mi
  The Mojave's rail-and-road hinge, where the Santa Fe yards and Route 66 meet at the Casa del Desierto Harvey House.

More markers nearby

• Town of Calico — 2.0 mi
• Harvey House — 8.0 mi
• Camp Cady (on the Mojave Road) — 16 mi
• The Mojave Road — 25 mi