Bodie, California
Bodie Ghost Town
Very Rough Road is an understatement
It is unusual for someone to want to visit a place where nothing happens, or ever will again, but Bodie, California is one of the best preserved ghost towns in the United States. The closest major city is probably Reno, Nevada, but I made the trip from the Los Angeles area through the Eastern Sierra Mountains, a distance of almost 400 miles. My only previous ghost town experience was Calico, near Barstow, California, and I can’t say it was a memorable one. The key difference is Calico was owned by Walter Knott (of Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park fame), who rebuilt and refurbished the tiny mining town with paved streets and gift shops that seemed to represent the ghost of Walt Disney. Bodie, on the other hand, is maintained by the State of California in a state of arrested decay, meaning that they nail a board back in if it comes loose, but they make no attempt to repaint, replace walls, etc., leaving the town exactly how it looked by the time the last residents high-tailed it out of there in the early 1960s.
The sleepy (dead) town of Bodie, California
Access to Bodie is via a 10 mile long winding road from US Highway 395, the last three of which is uneven gravel. I had reached the parking lot shortly before I was convinced the car was going to self destruct; the parking lot is on the outskirts so as not to detract from the abandoned look of the town. It’s recommended that you visit Bodie between Memorial Day and Labor Day as the climate can be fierce and cold, which explains the weather-beaten structures in the town. In heavy snowfall, the road in is impassable.
Waiting at Bodie Hotel for something to happen. It does not.
From the parking lot a slight uphill walk takes you to a conglomeration of abandoned mining equipment, and as impressive as the rusted skeletal corpses are, walking over the crest of the hill is breathtaking. What’s left of the town (about 10 percent) is nestled in a small valley at the foot of an extinct volcano, the source of the gold that lured prospectors and miners to the town in the late 1800s. What started as a mining camp in 1859 blossomed to a peak population of 10,000 in 1880, and then began declining until 1962 when there were only 10 people left. Only one building appears to have paint on it, and this is because a glassed-in front porch protected it from the elements. This is the J. S. Cain house, which is now the year-round residence of state employees who serve as caretakers and security for the park. The tell-tale electric and phone wires going into the house give it away, and the park volunteers state that it has been somewhat modernized inside.
The grave of Rosa May, one of the "working women"
Because the town was removed from bigger cities, miners who had a few dollars in their pockets to spend help develop a market for vice, which flourished in the north end of town. Rosa May (whose real name was Rosa Elizabeth White) was a “working woman” in Bodie’s red light district, but made a name for herself in the early nineteen tens by coming to the aid of the sick during an epidemic that swept through the town, eventually claiming her life. Decades later, a cement grave stone was erected (poor choice of words?) outside the boundaries of the cemetery (because she was deemed “unrighteous” she was denied burial in the cemetery), but it was later discovered that the location was incorrect. White’s actual burial site was close by, identified by a wooden grave marker.
Nothing - it is what is for dinner in Bodie
What makes the town remarkable is when looking in many of the buildings with the windows, doors and roofing intact, many of the furnishings and household objects are left in place as if the residents were just going to the post office and never returned. In one house, a closer glance at an upholstered sofa showed that a small rabbit had made himself a home there; he sat in the middle of the sofa oblivious to the people staring in at him from the front window. Cars lie rusting where they were left; mounds of trash behind some of the homes contain old broken bottles and tin cans. Because Bodie is now a state park, everything is protected, which means that you are discouraged (by law) from removing as much as a splinter from Bodie.
There are some other amazing sites in the area, making Bodie well worth the effort. If you go, be sure to say, “Hello” to my friend Casper.
Bodie State Historical Park
Main St
Bodie, CA 93517
GPS coordinates: 38°12′44″N 119°00′44″W
