Bodie is of outstanding significance today. Its location, setting and total isolation make it almost the prototype of the Western ghost town; in terms of the number of buildings which have survived and their unusually good condition, Bodie is one of the best preserved of the old mining camps; its history, while typical of the strike, boom and decline cycle, was unusually long and colorful, and in a period when desperados and hard cases were a dime a dozen, a "Bad man from Bodie," was universally recognized to be a particularly unpleasant individual. Few gold towns of the West today so aptly typify the life and times of the mining frontier. After the decline of the California Mother Lode in the Fifties, disappointed prospectors crossed the Sierra in search of "color" on the east slope. Although the first strike at Bodie was in 1859, mining activity was restricted for some time, due in part to the difficulties of transporting supplies A street in Bodie, California, a ghost town far from civilization or a paved road. The buildings of this former gold camp are unusually well preserved because of the dry, desert air. In the middle Seventies a mineralized zone "Bigger than the Comstock," two and one-half miles in length and nearly one mile in width, was discovered which precipitated the boom. From a few shacks the town rapidly grew to near 10,000 or more persons, with the usual assortment of gambling dens, breweries, saloons, and the nightly shootings, stabbings and brawls, from which it received the title of "Shooters Town." While the boom lasted some thirty companies produced $400,000 of bullion per month; the Standard mine yielded nearly $15,000,000 over a twenty-five year period. The quartz mines began to peter out by the middle Eighties, but mining continued intermittently up to World War II. The total output of the Bodie mines has been estimated at $70,000,000. Since WWW II the town has been deserted. Condition of Site Today Bodie is a true ghost town situated in high desert country near Mono Lake. Within a few miles are mountain peaks of 10,000 feet elevation. Across the treeless bleak expanse of lake and desert, only fifteen miles away rises the sheer wall of the Sierra Nevada.
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Sources of information:
Bodie.com
Bodie State Historical Society
UNLV Special Collections
UNR Special Collections
Nevada State Historical Society
Images of America Bodie 1859-1962 Arcadia Publishing 2009 Terri Lynn Geissinger