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Bodie - Boomtown Ghost Town

Bodie is one of the last abandoned boomtowns that has been preserved just like it was when most of the
population left in 1912. Today Bodie is a State Park with a ranger’s site open 24 hours 365 days of the
year. The weather worn town is in the foothills of eastern Sierra Nevada just south of Bridgeport. Bodie
is one of the first boomtowns' to be presented in a state of "arrested decay." The only restoration of the
town is enough repair work to keep the buildings intact.
Bodie today does not re-create the old Wild West! You will not see the saloons and souvenir shops lin-
ing the streets. Instead, you will find an abandoned ghost town, preserved as nearly as possible to when
it was full of life with ghosts like; gamblers, miners, shopkeepers, and “ladies of the night.” Gold was
discovered in 1859 by a group of prospectors including William S. Bodey who died in a winter storm the very next year. In memory
the town was named Bodey. The name was changed to Bodie after a sign painter misspelled Bodey’s name. In 1879 the goldrush start-
ed with the Standard Company mine discovering a sizable deposit of gold and ended in the late 1880’s. The wealth in Bodie by all
mining totaled 33,000,000, which today would be valued at 1 billion! The last mine was closed in 1942, due to the War Production
Board Order L- 208.

Bodie is at 8375 feet, and very cold in the winters. Even though the life was harsh, people found inventive ways to overcome old prob-
lems such as perfecting the cyanide process for gold extraction and powering its mills with Hydroelectric Power. Isolation and dis-
tance made it difficult for supplies and building materials to be transported. This explains why so much was left behind. The windows
of Bodie reveals whole rooms full of furniture, scattered personal belongings, merchandise of store shelves and what must have been
once treasured items. When the mines were depleted people started leaving. It was much cheaper to leave things behind and buy new
later than to pay someone to haul it all out of town.

In Bodie’s prime bustling downtown included a Wells Fargo Bank, four volunteer fire companies, a brass band, railroad, miners, Me-
chanics, unions, stables, blacksmiths, mercantile, hotels, diners, and several daily newspapers. The main street was a mile long and
included 65 saloons and at the north end was the “red-light district.” At the height of the population in 1880 there were 10,000 people
in Bodie with around 2000 buildings. Life in Bodie was hard, and the citizens had the temperament to match its wicked climate. The
“bad men” were desperate, violent characters who
lived by gambling, gun-fighting, stage robbing and
robbing other miners. The church bell that rang out
at the end of the day letting the residences know of
a death; and some days it rang many times. In the
fenced in cemetery are filled with the good souls
who died of normal tragedies such as accidents in
the mines or exposure to the elements. The "bad
men from Bodie" and “ladies of the night” are bur-
ied all around the outside perimeter.

I have made many trips to Bodie and gained a
glimpse of the past every time I venture to the old
boomtown. Today only 170 buildings remain in-
cluding the last remaining gold mill. As I wander
through the streets and peer through windows, I
have captured the ghost town in the following pho-
tos. Maybe in your next adventure you to will meet
up with some of the towns forgotten souls of Bod-
ies’ ghosts of the forgotten past!

Pat Patterson; Photos from 1990 - 2021

April 2022 Page 31