The last three miles of the drive to Bodie State Historic Park on Bodie Road off Highway 395 were left unpaved to preserve a feel of remoteness.  Well, the designers of the park achieved their goal and something more.  Those last three miles reminded this visitor just what it was like for the original settlers to journey into the site of the historic ghost town as his kidneys were left bouncing somewhere up around his ears.

But the bone-rattling drive was well worth any discomfort.  Bodie is unique, a voyeurist’s dream, a glimpse into the past that, once observed, firmly resides in ones memory. What’s left of the historic gold mining settlement rises like a Phoenix out of the parched, sterile earth of a High Mono County plain near the Nevada border, the aged wooden buildings a reminder of the glory days when the search for California gold and silver dominated the hearts and souls of adventurers from around the world

And they’re still coming.  Some 250,000 visitors from all parts of the planet, adults and children alike, visit this desolate landscape each year to get a look at a time150 years ago when the town of Bodie was a thriving community in this most unlikely of environs.   Over a hundred buildings maintained in a state described as “arrested decay” remain open to the public, comprising about five percent of the original town. Among them are a host of original family homes along with numerous business and service establishments.  In its heyday of the 1880s, Bodie’s population numbered about ten thousand. Named after Waterman S. Body, also known as William S. Bodey, who reportedly discovered gold there in 1859.  Although sometimes referred to as Bode, mining records list it as Body until late in 1862 when it was given the name Bodie either by citizens of the town or by an illiterate sign painter.  Both versions have been reported.

The area was dormant until the decline of mining in the western slope of the Sierra Nevada prompted prospectors to move east.  The discovery of the Comstock Lode at Virginia City impelled a wild exodus of prospectors to the high desert country.  In 1878, a rich vein of gold was discovered at Bodie when a mine shaft collapsed and the rush was on, thousands of fortune seekers quickly surging to the region.  Four hundred and fifty businesses of every conceivable type grew up virtually overnight.  Included was a town within a town, “Chinatown”, with over three hundred Chinese residents who maintained their own culture and way of life.

Like many “wild west” settlements, Bodie was a lawless place.  Women numbered just ten percent of the population and 65 saloons dominated the town’s streets.  Daily existence reads like a movie script with murders occurring often and street fights, robberies, and stagecoach holdups commonplace. Lonely men, working the mines all day, sought out the saloons and the recreation provided by “working girls” and prostitution flourished.  The California State Park’s publication on Bodie quotes the Reverend Warrington in 1881 as describing it as “a sea of sin, lashed by the tempest of lust and passion.”  The same source credits a little girl on her way to Bodie who wrote in her diary, “Goodbye God, I’m going to Bodie.”

Bodie Jail,  Bodie, California..1962

The Bodie region ultimately produced nearly 100 million dollars worth of gold and silver and during its halcyon days, the Standard Mine yielded 15 million dollars in gold.  The Standard Company was the most successful of the thirty mines operating in and around Bodie but in 1915 a suit was brought against it by it’s neighbor, the Midnight Mine, owned by the James S. Cain Company, and as a result of the court’s judgment, Cain took over the Standard Mine.  It seems that Standard had illegally tunneled into the Midnight Mine and was stealing its gold ore!   Bodes prosperity ultimately came to an end because of its water table, only 250 feet below the earth’s surface, which required the continuous pumping of water out of the mines, an expense too great once the supply of ore diminished. 

Today’s visitor will enjoy a fascinating encounter with history as buildings have been preserved through the application of funds provided to the Department of Parks and Recreation, awarded the site in 1962 by the California Cultural and Historical Endowment and the National Park Service.  Preservation efforts require the use of traditional materials on historic buildings, wherever possible, and materials that 19^th century builders used have often been employed.  Although there is still gold beneath its surface, no one can mine the Bodie region any more, thanks to the Bode Protection Act, a part of the California Desert Protection Act of 1994.  Thus its history is preserved.

A walk through the streets of Bodie offers up a keen sense of what life was like in those times.  There is evidence of strong and continuing efforts at civilizing the place, the work of people striving to bring vestiges of normality to a seething cauldron of quest for riches and resultant violence.  The homes of families, schools, stores, banks and churches dot the landscape and are interspersed with saloons, brothels, the town jail, and the cemetery.  Homes, many still furnished, housed the Dolans, McDonalds, Donnellys, Mendocinis, Moyles, Bells, Metzgers, and many others.  Following the winding streets introduces you to the Old Methodist Church, Tom Miller Stable and Ice House, Bells Machine Shop, Mastretti Liquor Warehouse, Stuart Kirkwood Livery Stable, Masonic Hall, Post Office, Miners Union Hall, and the Swazey Hotel.

Methodist Church, Green & Fuller Streets, Bodie, California..1962

When Bodie was wallowing in the wealth of it’s gold ore, there was always excitement in the air.  Lotttie Johl lived on Main Street, achieving respectability as a painter and wife of a prominent resident after beginning her professional life in the red-light district.  In 1892, the first test of the new hydroelectric building and power substation was launched with telephone poles installed on the streets in straight lines as it was feared that electricity wouldn’t turn corners.  One day, Joseph DeRoche was taken from the town jail by a vigilante group and hanged in full view of the townspeople.  From the corner of Main and King Streets, the Standard Mine and Mill, a hub of frenzied activity, could be seen on the west slope of Bodie Bluff.  If you were to drive north from the juncture, you would come to Aurora, Nevada where Mark Twain lived while prospecting nearby.  Stagecoaches were plundered with some regularity and men often died in the street at the end of a smoking Colt revolver.

So walk the streets of Bodie and feel the lingering past.  The history is pervasive, encompassing, intoxicating, mysterious as ghosts seem to linger on every street corner, in every crevice. The bone-rattling approach notwithstanding, the trip to Bodie is a must, a delightful journey to bygone days, a bit of Americana preserved for all of us to observe and from which to learn.

View From Cemetary Looking East, Bodie, California...1962

“And now my comrades are all gone; Naught remains to toast. They have left me here in my misery. 

 Like some poor wandering ghost.”

      “The Days Of Forty-Nine”  

             by        

      Robert Egbert Stevenson

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How to get there:  From Sacramento, take US-50 toward Reno/Placerville/CA-99/S/Fresno. Turn right onto CA-89/Luther Pass Rd.  Turn left onto CA-88/CA-89.Turn right onto NV-756 and stay on it straight onto Dresslerville Rd and then straight onto Riverview Dr.  Turn left onto CA-270/Bodie Rd