Lens-Artists Photo Challenge Weathered and Worn – Bodie, CA

You may have figured out from last week’s post on Kennecott, I really love ghost towns.

Bodie is located at the end of a rough dirt road a few miles off CA Highway 395. It is a California State Historic Park. Plan your visit for summer or fall, as Bodie is snowbound for nearly half the year.

Gold was discovered in Bodie in 1859. By the 1880s, the town was booming, with a population of nearly 10,000 people and 65 saloons. In addition to the saloons, there were brothels, gambling halls, and opium dens. Bodie hosted a thriving Chinatown.

It was a pretty rough place. On one day in 1880, the newspaper reported 3 shootings and 2 stagecoach robberies.

Watch the tumbleweeds roll through the streets and listen to the wind sing as it blows past old pipes and rusted metal.  The sound of a creaking door may draw you back in time to the days when Bodie was the epitome of the Wild West.  Back to the days when outlaws would challenge the sheriff to a gunfight right in the middle of the street.

Bodie was a synonym for lawlessness to many. Legend has it that one little girl, on learning she would be moving there from San Francisco, said: “Goodbye, God, I am going to Bodie.”

Bodie eventually outlived its bad reputation and become better known as a town where respectable miners eked out a hard living as they tried to raise their families. Peek into the windows at what the last inhabitants left behind and imagine their lives in this hardscrabble town, a place that was bitterly cold, snowy and windy in the winter and blazing hot and dry in the summers.

A major fire in 1892 signaled the beginning of Bodie’s long, slow decline. The Panic of 1907 hit the community hard, bankrupting many of the mines and businesses. The railroad closed in 1917, another blow for the struggling town. A fire in 1932 was the final nail in the coffin for Bodie. By the 1950s, even the most stalwart residents left.

Bodie sat abandoned until 1962 when the state declared the property a State Historic Park. Bodie is maintained in a state of arrested decay. The buildings are prevented from deteriorating further, but not restored, preserving the feel of a village forgotten, offering a tantalizing glimpse of days gone by for today’s visitors.