The Ultimate Ghost Town
Bodie, Mono Co., CA
by
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Sometimes events beyond our control make tremendous changes in our
lives and cause us to sit back and re-evaluate our perceptions of life and
family. Nearly ten years ago, on
September 23, 2002, one of those life-changing events happened in my life. My baby sister, Barbara
Jo “BJ” Speck passed away at the age of 49. Never married, she had a wide circle of
friends and family who loved her, and mourn her loss. BJ shared my love of exploration and
discovery, which was probably a genetic gift from our parents. After graduating from high school in 1971,
she moved to the summer/ski resort of Mammoth
Lakes,
This article is dedicated to my little sister: BJ, this one’s for you. ENJOY!
***************
“And now my comrades all are gone;
Naught remains to toast.
They have left me here in my misery,
Like some poor wandering ghost.”*
***************
About 20 miles
southeast of Bridgeport, Mono County, California the century-old gold mining
ghost town of Bodie is the most visited, most written
about and most photographed ghost town in America. And it’s not because this place is real easy
to get to either. Yes, Bodie is passenger car
accessible but it’s 10 paved, and 3 winding graded
dirt miles east of US 395 north of
What
is it about this ramshackle collection of chocolate-colored wooden buildings,
dirt roads and dry “weeds” that invites people to visit, returning time and
time again? This one-time mining city
once had possibly as many as 20,000 people, is only a skeleton of what it once
was. Major fires in 1892 and 1932
reduced the standing buildings to only 5% of what once stood here. But that 5% still includes over 150
structures, the vast majority of which are wood.
Squatting in a
sagebrush covered bowl at an altitude of 8400', Bodie
frequently makes the weather reports as the coldest place in the nation:
sometimes on the same day that
The story of Bodie begins innocently enough less than a decade after the
California Gold Rush began. On a quiet little creek in the hills north of what
is now called
As the story
goes, on July 4, 1859, a Dogtown man had a bit too
much liquid celebration, and wandered over the hills to the east. As he stopped to rest (or recover) he found
placer gold. Upon his return to Dogtown, he spilled the story, and soon Dogtown
became the first ghost camp in the Eastern Sierra.
News of the new
diggings spread, with miners flocking to the rich new discovery. By September, 700 miners had gathered at the
burgeoning placer camp, and three months later a post office was
established. During that first brutal
winter less than one-fourth of the people stayed, but come spring of 1860,
In general,
prospectors are a wandering lot, and quickly get itchy feet. Even though Monoville was flush with gold excitement during 1859, an
unknown New Yorker and his partner(s?) wandered out, meeting history head-on.
Waterman (William) S. Bodey (Body) and “Black”
By March 1860,
After the
now-melt in May, Bill Bodey’s bones and weapons were
found by Taylor, who buried what remained of poor old Bill. Grief stricken over the loss of his friend,
Taylor left the area.
Somehow word of
Bodey and
There are
several versions of the naming of the camp. Take your choice...
- One is that in October 1862, a
misspelled sign on the "Bodie Stables”
changed the name of the struggling little gold mining camp forever.
- Number two claims that the citizens of
the booming town wanted the name to be pronounced correctly so the
spelling was changed to reflect the pronunciation. BODIE
is actually pronounced BOW’ DEE.
Whether the
camp named for Bodey changed names due to a sign
painter's error, or the vote of its citizens doesn’t matter. It marked this town for eternity. Bodie was a tiny,
struggling gold-camp living the successes and failures of outlying camps such
as
In 1874 Bodie’s future changed.
Deep inside the old Bunker Hill-Bullion Mine, a cave-in exposed
fabulously rich ore. Fortunes changed,
and the rag-tag, 15-year old mining camp was now a full-on boomtown.
Bodie was the West's newest sweetheart. By 1877, Bodie’s
mile-long main street with 65 saloons and daily killings,
caused a local pastor to comment about the new town as sitting in “a sea
of sin, lashed by the tempests of lust and passion.” The extreme isolation appealed to the seamier
side of humanity; prostitutes, gamblers, and other assorted riff-raff arrived
to fleece whomever they could for a quick buck or two.
At its peak in
1879, Bodie was rough, uncultured and uncivilized.
It was
wild.
It was rich.
Unlike many
mining towns, Bodie grew in an organized manner. Streets were laid out in grids to allow
orderly expansion. Growth demanded wood,
and since Bodie sat in a treeless basin, lumber was hauled
from the thick forests south of
By 1882, the
boom subsided a tad. The mines still
employed 400-500 men, and there was enough activity to support a population of
a few thousand. Even though the big boom
was over, Bodie was a long ways from taking a dirt
nap.
Unlike most of
its contemporaries, Bodie went 30 years without the
scourge of fire. That ended on July 25,
1892. Black smoke enveloped the business
district as fire raced from Mrs. Perry's Restaurant, ripping through the wooden
heart of Bodie.
The pride-and-joy volunteer fire department raced to the rescue, hooked
up their hoses and turned on the water.
NOTHING!
Recovery began
as soon as the ashes were cool. However,
since the boom was long past, recovery consisted of clearing charred debris,
and relocating undamaged structures from back roads to the main streets. When complete, Bodie
was visibly smaller, but alive.
Through the
1890s, electric power and cyanide processing of ore kept the old town alive,
but the excitement was gone and the population dwindled. In 1899 the Standard Mill burned to the
ground, but was rebuilt.
Over the next
30 years Bodie continued fading. New mine owners came
and went. Investors bought and sold. Folks came and went – mostly went. But, the gold kept flowing,
albeit slowly.
On June 24,
1932, a young lad playing with some small wooden friends in an abandoned shack
changed the face of the community – a second time. A few hours later 70% of Bodie was a smoking memory.
Reeling from
its second major fire, a national depression, and aging mines, Bodie barely clung to life.
In October 1936 the Roseclip Mine reopened,
and in 1939 Bodie still had 125 people according to
the WPA.
In 1942 the
U.S. Government ordered most of
That was
it.
Bodie's death knell sounded, and the near-90-year
old town rolled up its sidewalks. After
producing nearly $100 million in gold, Bodie died.
Most of the remaining folks left Bodie languishing in
the ever-present wind, sunshine and brutal winters until 1962 when the site was
purchased from the Cain family by the state of
On September
12, 1964, Bodie was reborn as a California State
Historic site, later graduating to a
That
is how this magnificent ghost survived to greet its countless thousands of
summertime visitors from all over the world.
Bodie IS the “Ultimate Ghost Town”, and IS a
must stop for all followers of Ghost Town USA! Hands down, this
is THE best-preserved ghost town in the entire country, and is a MUST SEE! Bodie is also California
Historic Landmark #209.
PHOTOS!
Two ways of
taking in the interesting buildings that remain are by
standing at the south end of Main
Street, look north and enjoying the scenic shadows playing on the
fronts of the buildings, or from the west end of Green
Street and look across the heart of the old town towards the mill
buildings on Bodie Bluff.
Click here and here and here for virtual
visits to Bodie.
BODIE
also has its own state park website.
For more information contact either
* Quote from the front cover of the Bodie State Historic Park walking-tour guide.
This is one of the towns featured
in my newest book, GHOST
TOWNS: Yesterday & TodayTM.
This was our GHOST TOWN OF THE MONTH for October 2002.
It has been modified and
numerous photos from our journey there in July 2011 have been added.
It was reposted as our GHOST TOWN OF
THE MONTH
for March/April 2012.
LOCATION:
·
Junction
of corners Sec 8, 9, 16, 17, T4N, R27E, Mount Diablo Meridian
·
Latitude:
38.2121401 / 38° 12’ 44” N
·
Longitude:
-119.0120874 / 119° 00 44” W
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THIS
PAGE
FIRST
POSTED: October
01, 2002
LAST
UPDATED: May 06, 2012
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