Bodie State Historic Park

Almost immediately following camp, I drove with my mom and aunt Kate to Bodie State Historic Park, a ghost town in the Eastern Sierras. It was pretty much love at first sight. Bodie has a desolate kind of beauty with wooden buildings in a state of “arrested decay” and expanse of sage and rabbit brush and dry rolling hills, trapping the town in a sort bowl.

The original town of Bodie was founding in 1859 when a man called W.S. Bodey (exact spelling is unknown) came to the area following a strike in Dogtown nearby. Just like much of Bodie’s history, Bodey’s exact is somewhat controversial. Not only are we unsure of the spelling of his last name, but we also do not know his first name. .If you look up in our cemetery, you will find two headstones for W.S. Bodey. One, put out by clampers, says William, which people in California seemed to think his name was. The other, says Watermann, which is the name that comes from the census in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Bodey came from. Incidentally, he is probably not buried in either of these graves, as the site of his body was lost when what was supposed to be his tombstone was used to bury James A. Garfield in effigy when he was assassinated. Unfortunately, Bodie died in a snow storm, just after discovering gold in the area and thus was unable to spend his fortune or ever see a town named for him.

When Bodie was founded it was just a small mining camp and it stayed this way for a number of years. It didn’t become a boom town until 1877. In 1875 there was a small mining operation called the Bunker Hill Mine, and just like any other operation in Bodie at the time, it was barely breaking even, when all of the sudden it collapsed. Now this may seem like a disaster, but it actually revealed a huge vein of gold oar in the rock. And that’s when people started coming to Bodie. People came from all over the world and the peak population here was probably somewhere between 8,000 to 10,000, making it one of the biggest towns in California. Main Street stretched a mile long with wall to wall wood buildings and had everything Bodieites could possibly want—grocery stores, butchers, dress shops, doctors, lawyers. And there were plenty of recreational activities as well—balls and masquerades in the Miner’s Union Hall, horse racing, and even our very own baseball team, the Bodie Mutts.

But there was another side of Bodie as well, and this side was the North end of town. The North end was where the sketchier of Bodie’s sixty saloons were, where the red light district was, and where an individual could indulge in Chinatown’s opium dens. Whisky could be purchase at 25 cents for two shots, and of course with all these gunslingers imbibing, there were many shots fired here in Bodie. The papers liked to report that there was a murder a day, and although an exaggeration, this was probably not far from the truth. This is where the idea of the “Bad Man from Bodie” came.

But of course, this excitement was during Bodie’s very short Boom Period and subsequently began to decline in 1881-2. There were many events had made this decline even quickly. The culminating event was a fire in 1932. It started indirectly due to a little girl’s birthday party. Due to the Depression, the girl’s mother was only able to afford lime green Jello and not cake and ice cream. I’m sure many were disappointed by this, but none so much as a little boy named Billy. He threw a tantrum and the adults turned the three year old loose on the now quiet streets of Bodie. Little Billy wound up behind a saloon and found a book of matches. Soon the saloon was on fire, and of course, being largely made of wood, Bodie was an incredibly flammable town. Many people lost there homes and businesses and left town. Those who remained strongly suggested that Billy and his mother leave as well. Today, only 5% of the building that once stood here still remains. Now Bodie is an important ghost town and historic site with the goal of authentic preservation. Of course, the town is also protected by the Bodie curse, which states that if anyone steals from Bodie they will find themselves with a run of bad luck. We receive frequent letters from people returning stolen items. The strangest was probably two wooden headstones that were stolen in the 1950s and just recently returned.

My first night here in Bodie was very exciting. My then roommate Jaclynn, my soon-to-be roommate Cecil, and I went and explored the old schoolhouse. It was pretty interesting, but I was also a little on edge from ghost stories. We then played a nice game of Scrabble, which is always a great way to end an evening.