Page 23 - May2022

If You Go o Bodie, CA

he Road t

On t An angel marks the grave of
a child in the Bodie
Cemetery, 1894. Image by T.
Marantette

In its prime the mining boom town of Bodie, California had
over 10,000 residents, two churches, 65 saloons, its own red
light district, a thriving Chinatown with its own Taoist temple, Above: The Stamp Mill of the Consolidated Mining
four fire companies, a Wells Fargo Bank, 30 mining Company was the most successful of the 30 mining
companies and a rail line that ran into the town. Over $100 companies in the area. This one was built in 1899 after
million dollars in gold was taken out of Bodie before it was an earlier version was destroyed in a fire in 1898. Fire
abandoned. What's left of the 1880s gold rush town was a constant threat in a town built on the quick with
remains in one of the coldest places in the continental USA, lumber as the primary building material.
accessible by a dirt road, impassable in the deep snows of
winter. If you plan a road trip plan to go in the summer.
Bodie began as a prospectors' camp in 1859 and was named
for a miner from New York named William Bodey who
discovered in the high desert area both gold and silver. He
died in a blizzard in the winter of 1860 trying to reach
Monoville, now known as Mono Lake, and never actually saw
the settlement that still bears his name. (The spelling of
the town's name resulted from a spelling error made by the
sign painter, the ultimate irony.)
Above: A residence still stands intact, glass panes in
Northeast of Yosemite National Park and 13 miles east of
place. Image California Park Service
Hwy 395, by 1920 Bodie had only 110 people still hanging on
Below: Look through the windows and you will see
and was considered to be an official ghost town. In 1942,
interiors like this, just as people left them when they
when the federal government ordered all gold mining to
pulled out of town. Image by Cliff Briggin
cease during WWII, Bodie's last caretaker left. Always
plagued by fire, many of the wooden buildings still in
Bodie burned during a fire in 1944, leaving what can be
seen today.

In 1962 Bodie was set aside as by the state of California as
Bodie State Historic Park and the archivists' terms
"preserved in place" or "preservation as found" were coined,
along with the idea of "arrested decay" as a good thing.
These designations mean that Bodie is maintained only to
ensure the structural safety of the remaining buildings and
the site is left to experience nature, telling the story of how
the site changes over time. Rot is repaired not replaced.
"Stuff" , dishes, caskets, pool tables, remain as they were left.
Left : Early gas pumps silently mark
The imperfections and curiosities that would have been
the passing of time from 1860 to
obscured by restoration can be fully appreciated. More than 1920, during Bodie's 60 year
200,000 people a year now visit Bodie. The town is alive. existence from boom town to ghost
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town. Image by Alicia Mariah Elfing