2015.10.02
These past few days I kept seeing and hearing thing about Bodie Ghost Town. The town is very attractive to me because I have never been to a ghost town. Moreover, a ranger in the Mono Lake Visitor Center gave me a map and told me more information about it. He looked at my camera and said "You would definitely love it if you like photography." He also told me it is worth it to stay there for at least half a day and it is one of the most well-preserved ghost towns in America. After all, since I didn't get the permit to climbing the Half Dome Cable, it might be a good idea to change my plan slightly. The ticket costs $5 and for an extra $2 you get a self guided book. The book marks 50 houses or areas, and elaborates on the histories about them. I took photos of all the 50 houses or areas and made detailed records, spent about 4.5 hours there, I walked almost every street in the town. They kept all the furniture and decorations in each house which you can see by peeking in through the windows. The broken and dated furniture sometimes send chills down my spine. It was a very special experience, just like traveling back in time, walking in the ghost town which was prosperous more than a hundred years ago because of The Gold Rush.
(All the content and note below are from self guide or the information I saw in the park, not originated by me.)
Following the 1849 gold rush, mining declined along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. Prospectors, ever hungry for the next big strike, crossed the Sierra Nevada to prospect the eastern slopes.
W.S. Bodey, from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., stumbled upon on of the richest Eastern Sierra gold strikes in 1859. He froze to death several months in November in a blizzard when he returned with supplies. He never lived to see the town named in his honor.
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Moyle Warehouse (Ruins)
The Moyle Warehouse, built in 1879, was one of many stone warehouses constructed to store supplies for the long, cold Bodie winters. |
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Sawmill
With snow as high as 20 feet deep, winds up to 100 miles an hour, and temperatures down to 30 or 40 below zero, plenty of firewood was needed to keep Bodie's poorly constructed houses warm during the winter. The winter of 1878-79 was especially severe, and some new arrivals were not adequately prepared. Many died of exposure or disease. |
Bodey's bones were rediscovered in 1879 and then "misplaced" after burial. His final resting place is now thought to be somewhere on the hill above the cemetery. The town's name came to be spelled "Bodie."
Mining was slow in Bodie during the 1860s and 1870s due to richer strikes at Aurora, and Virginia City in Nevada. From 1863 to 1877 only handful of industrious prospectors and miners worked the Bodie mines. A collapse in the Bunker Hill Mine exposed a rich vein of gold and silver ore in 1875 and the Bodie rush and boom began. By 1879 the population of the town grew to well over 2000 --- it reached 7000 or more inhabitants within another two years and swelled seasonally in the summertime.
30 different companies mined the earth along with 9 stamp mills that pulverized the ore and separated the gold. Along with miners and merchants, Bodie attracted bad men, who gave the town a reputation for wild times. There were more than 60 saloons, many near Bonanza Street prostitutes' "cribs" and opium dens in Chinatown. The boom year were over quickly as unsuccessful mines began closing. The population dropped quickly and continued to dwindle into the 1900s. Mining continued until 1942.
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Bonanza Street
Conveniently located behind Main Street saloons, Bodie's red-light district was also know as Maiden Lane and Virgin Alley. Beautiful Doll, Rosa May, Emma Goldsmith, Nellie Monroe, French Joe, and other ladies of the evening lived and worked here in a row of mostly one-room cabins, called "cribs." From Bonanza Street, you can see a crumbling building with a brick foundation to the north. This was the Maestretti Liquor Warehouse. It is named for Antone Maestretti, a native of Switzerland, who owned a saloon and a bakery in Bodie. He briefly served as constable in 1880. |
During the heydays, the town attracted people from all over the world. Records show residents from Italy, Ireland, England, Mexico, France, Germany, Canada, and elsewhere.
In 1880, 16 African Americans appeared on the census. Their occupations included hairdresser, barber, waiter, cook, laundry worker, and miner. In April 1880, the death of one of Bodie's most well-known African Americans was reported in The Daily Bodie Standard newspaper. William O'Hara, known as "Uncle Billy" to many, had come to Bodie in 1863. For many years, he ran the boarding house of the Empire Mining Company. It was reported that he acquired the property of what would later be known as the Standard Mine because of a debt owed him. He tried to sell it, but mining experts told him the property was worthless. He finally re-sold the property to the previous owner for $8000
The 1880 census shows 253 Chinese residents, but many think the Chinese population was greater than that. The Chinatown site is located in the northwest section of town.
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Chinatown
Only two buildings and some ruins remain of what was a large Chinatown. Wood-frame buildings (some built over stone cellars) lined King Street. The Chinese quarter offered residents a full range of services, including general stores, laundries gambling halls, saloons, boarding houses, and a Taoist temple. Opium dens were frequented by Caucasian and Chinese alike. Chinese people were discriminated against and not allowed to join the Miners' Union, which kept them from high-paying jobs. Their main sources of income came from selling vegetables, operating laundries and cutting and selling firewood. |
Little information about the 35 native Paiutes is given on the 1880 census. Only one was listed with a name, "Captain Bob." The sudden growth of Bodie impacted the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the native population. Some of the native people adapted by working in Bodie and other towns and ranches. Their small huts were found on the ridge above town. They also worked at Hank Blanchard's lime kiln in Mono Basin. Many Paiute women worked as household help.
Total gold and silver production value for Bodie from 1860 through 1941 equaled $33,954,919.2. The highest annual gold and silver production was in 1881 and totaled $3,160,067.51. After 1884 the annual combined production value fell by 50%, but production continued more or less steadily. Two years without production came after the stock market crashed in 1929, followed by one year of production in 1931. The Bodie fire of 1932 resulted in another four years without report. From 1936 to 1941 production was low but steady.
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Bodie Bank
All that remains of the Bodie Bank after the 1932 fire is its brick vault. James S. Cain bought the bank, founded by E.L. Benedict, in 1890. Despite Bodie's wild west reputation, its bank was never robbed. A nighttime burglary on September 1. 1916, however, yielded $2000 in cash, some bullion and other valuables. |
On October 8, 1942, due to copper shortages, the U.S. War Production Board issued Limitation Order L-208, which stopped gold mining operations. The War Board order affected more than just the Bodie mines, since lack of jobs the mine and mill workers caused the school and post office to close as well.
The family of Bodie's last major landowner, James S. Cain, hired caretakers to watch over the town and protect it from looters and vandals. Besides, E Clampus Vitus, which was a fraternal order and benevolence society for miners during the California Gold Rush, is dedicated to the preservation of California history nowadays. Accordingly, members of the present day Bodie chapter were instrumental in preserving the town as a historic landmark. With their help in 1956, legislation was drafted to add Bodie to the state park system. By 1962, the process was complete and one year later, Bodie was included in the National Registry of Historic Sites. In 1964, Bodie was dedicated as a state historic park.
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James Stuart Cain House
James S. Cain arrived in Bodie at age 25 in 1879. He had just married Martha Delilah Wells of Genoa, Nevada. Cain entered the lumber business and put barges and a steamship on Mono Lake to transport wood. In 1888, he became a banker and kept the Bodie Bank open until 1932. In 1915, he acquired the Standard Company mining properties through court action and soon became the principal property owner in town. He always believed Bodie's mines would prosper again. |
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Bell Machine Shop
Bobby Bell, son of Lester L. Bell, was born at Bodie in 1914 and worked in the mines and stamp mill. He helped stabilize Bodie's buildings in the 1960s and 1970s. He also contributed his knowledge of the town in the early years of the new state park. He died in 2003 and is buried in the Bodie Cemetery. |
Today, only about five percent of the buildings remain from the town's 1877-1881 heyday, most having fallen victim to time, fire and the elements.
Designated a California State Park in 1962, it is now preserved in a state of "arrested decay." This means that buildings' roofs, windows and foundations are repaired and stabilized, not restored.
Different atmospheres can be experienced from the town's different time periods. Houses that were built in the 1870s, the Standard Mill from the late 1890s, gas pumps form the 1920s, and a schoolhouse that was used until 1942. Some buildings are named according to past functions, others for the people who lived there --- whether the first, the last, or most notable.
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Standard Mill
It is the Standard Consolidated Mining Company's Stamp Mill. The Standard was the most successful of 30 mining companies operating in the Bodie Mining District. Heavy iron rods known as stamps broke up quartz rock containing gold and silver. Mercury (and later cyanide) was used to separate the metals from the crushed rock. The Standard Mine, located on the hill above, was first known as the Bunker Hill and then Bullion Mine. A mine collapse in 1875 revealed a rich ore vein and started the rush to Bodie. The mine was renamed the Standard in 1877 and yielded more than $18 million over 38 years. This mill was built in 1899 after an 1898 fire destroyed the original building. In 1893 Superintendent Thomas Leggett brought electricity to power the mill from a hydroelectric plant about 13 miles away---one of the first long-distance transmissions of alternating current in the United States. |
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Schoolhouse
Originally the Bon Ton Lodging House. This became a school after the first school was allegedly burned down by an early-day juvenile delinquent. In 1879-1880, the school saw its highest enrollment of 615 students. It closed in 1942. |
It's easy to lose sight of environmental costs of the California Gold Rush behind the glitter of gold. But gold fever didn't merely affect the hearts and minds of rainbow-chasing men of the past, it had --- and it still having --- a very real effect on the environment.
Hydraulic mining during the 1800s resulted in over 13 billion tons of the western Sierra being washed into the Sacramento River and San Francisco Bay. Hundreds of miles of underground tunnels have destabilized the earth, causing hillsides above to "slump". The thousands of tons of mercury used during the gold rush continue to be a health concern --- there is still evidence of it downstream in Bodie Creek. Native Americans were displaced from their lands and their cultures shattered. Forest were cut, rivers were dammed, and wildlife habitat and populations declined. Cyanide ponds at modern-day mining operations kill thousands of wild animals and birds yearly. When 70% of gold mined worldwide is used for jewelry (with 20% used for industry, and a small amount used for dentistry), we have to ask ourselves: is that new pair of gold earrings or that new golden ring worth it?
Bodie itself has been the site of environmental clean-up and was threatened by modern mining. In 1988, Galactic Resources, a Canadian mining company, began exploratory drilling on the land above Bodie. They wanted to develop open-pit mining with cyanide-laced settling ponds. The California State Park Rangers Association and a local grassroots movement worked to defeat their proposal because of the effect the operation would have on the park. In 1992, Galactic declared bankruptcy after a cyanide spill at another operation they had in Summitville, Colorado. Congress passed the Bodie Protection Act in 1994 to discourage further mineral exploration around Bodie. Galactic's land at Bodie was purchased and add to the park in 1997.
Galactic became one of many failed mining companies in Bodie's history. Even during the "boom period", many of Bodie's mining companies went bankrupt due to lack of profitability. Only a few mining operations were successful in the end. One fo the companies of lesser success, the Red Cloud Mine, has some of its equipment featured here.
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Red Cloud Mining Equipment
This equipment was relocated from the Red Cloud Mine southeast of here. The large wooden structure is called a head frame, also known as a gallows frame. It once stood over the hoisting works of the mine's vertical shaft. Beneath it are cages that transported miners and hauled out ore and waste rock. A steam hoist and air compressor are nearby. |
