Kelso, Ghost town in San Bernardino County, US

Kelso is a ghost town and former railroad depot in the Mojave National Preserve, San Bernardino County, California. Its landmark is the Kelso Depot, a Spanish Colonial Revival station built in 1923 with boarding rooms, a restaurant, a telegraph office and a waiting room; it now serves as the preserve's visitor center.

Kelso was founded in 1906 with the completion of the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad and named after laborer John Kelso. The depot, built in 1923, included boarding rooms, a telegraph office, and a restaurant. The town peaked around 1942 with about 2,000 residents when the Vulcan Mine shipped 2,500 tons of iron ore daily to Fontana; the high sulfur content ended shipments shortly after World War II, and diesel locomotives made the helper engines obsolete. The depot closed in 1985, was sold to the Bureau of Land Management for one dollar in 1992, and reopened as the preserve's visitor center in 2005.

The old depot building is a good starting point since it works as a visitor center where you can get your bearings before exploring the grounds. Summer heat in the desert can be very strong, so bring enough water and plan your visit for the morning or the cooler months.

John H. Kelso was a railroad worker whose name was drawn from a hat alongside two others to name the town. In the 1970s about 75 residents lived here and television signals could not reach the valley, so Kelso was called "the town without television" until satellite dishes arrived. An old strap-iron jail brought in about 1944 to hold local drunks now stands just outside the depot.