Bodie, California

Mono County

06-07288

Bodie is a ghost town east of San Francisco in California to the Nevada border in the United States. It was built after 1859 when gold mining town and was abandoned in the 1930s. Thanks to the low humidity, lots of buildings, equipment and automobiles were relatively well preserved. The ensemble is regarded today as the best preserved ghost town in the USA.

Rise

William S. Bodey (some sources speak of Waterman S. Bodey ) was found in 1859 in Mono County in the Sierra Nevada, about 20 miles north of Mono Lake, Gold. In the same year he probably died in a snow storm, after he had put up in the next town to get new materials and foodstuffs. However, his family founded at this point, the town of Bodie and began in 1861 with the gold mining. The change in spelling was intended to avoid a mispronunciation as " Body" ( = corpse ).

The geology of the region is dominated by andesite with large breccia dykes with high silicon content and narrow quartzite transitions. In both structures, free gold is mixed in fine proportions. Other minerals are pyrite and a relatively high silver content. After the Standard Company, which operated the gold mine in Bodie, 1876 was met with a very profitable gold mine, the town grew rapidly. Only four years later, already lived 10,000 inhabitants in Bodie.

In Bodie, there was during this heyday of the town 65 saloons along the main street, a red light district with many brothels, a Chinese quarter with a taoitischen stamp and an opium den, a railway, several newspapers, seven breweries and churches of different religions.

But the crime found its way. Murders, robberies and stagecoach robbery were almost a daily occurrence. The gold mining town of Bodie enjoyed a bad reputation and was regarded at that time as one of the wildest and most lawless towns of the West.

Reported is the quote a little girl that would go with his parents to Bodie and wrote in his diary ( "Goodbye God, I 'm moving to Bodie !") "Goodbye God, I'm going to Bodie ".

The most successful mining companies in Bodie were standard with $ 18,000,000 Syndicate with over $ 1,000,000, Bodie Tunnel with over $ 200,000, Bechtel Cons. with approximately $ 200,000 and $ 122,000 with mono.

Decline

After a few boom years of the mine threw hardly any profit from, partly because the price of gold had fallen sharply and the operation so worth less and less. The great California Gold Rush, which began in 1849, was over. After Bodie else had to offer no source of income, the population soon went back again rapidly.

Around the turn of the century, there was again a small upturn, but the decline could not stop. In 1917 the railway line was dismantled and the rails were scrapped. Bodie but still had a few inhabitants until the middle of the twentieth century.

After a major fire in 1932, the number of houses, except for the few, to this day remaining buildings destroyed, the city's fate was sealed, however. The business district in the city center was completely destroyed by the fire. The post office opened in 1877 closed in 1942.

The mine was first operated in the following years further; the workers came from the neighboring towns. In the sixties, but the gold mining was then completely abandoned.

The same gold mining town of Bodie in Okanogan County ( Washington State ) in which the Bodie mine was operated, suffered the same fate. From this ghost town of a few dilapidated houses are still preserved.

Demographics

The explosive rise and rapid decline of Bodie will become apparent from the official population figures that the Mono County has collected regularly:

Bodie State Historic Park

Since 1962, Bodie is a State Park. There are about 170 buildings available that has spared by the great fire in 1932, including a church, a school, a bank building made ​​of bricks, a bar, a shop and several houses and the large mine building.

Many of the furnishings are still there so, as if the former residents only recently gone. The small cemetery outside the town the grave stones former resident can be seen. The fuel dispensers an old gas station are also still available as a few rusting car wrecks from the 30s. Some buildings can be entered. For the old mine tours are offered.

The park management ensures a careful preservation of the original state. It is strictly forbidden to take things out of the park.

The city is located north of Mono Lake at about a 20 -kilometer access road that branches off between Lee Vining and Bridgeport from U.S. Highway 395. For the preservation of the Park Bodie management requires a small amount of visitors. As in Bodie State Park there are absolutely no shops, the carrying of drinks in the summer is recommended.

The last five kilometers of the Directions from Highway 395 Bodie are no longer paved and lead on a gravel road. The summers in the Sierra Nevada are hot and the winters are very cold with lots of snow. In winter, the access roads are often so high snow that Bodie is accessible only on skis or snowmobiles. Self -wheel drive vehicles with snow chains get stuck year after year.