Episode 68: Bodie, CA: America's Best Genuine Gold-Mining Ghost Town

In this episode, we visit the ghost town of Bodie, a national historical landmark and a state historical park located about an hour north of Mammoth Lakes, CA on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The town was named after W.S. Bodey, who discovered gold in the hills near Mono Lake. While traveling back for supplies, he was caught in a blizzard and died. The town was named after him, although the spelling was changed to Bodie somewhere along the line. An accidental mine collapse in 1876 exposed a huge vein of gold deposits and people flocked to the town in the following year. At its peak, the town had over 2000 buildings, nine stamp mills, a railroad, bank, cemetery, mortuary, 62 saloons, and 7000-10,000 people. But gold fever comes with its own consequences. The town was one of the wildest in the wild, wild west. Gunfights, stage coach robberies, and murders were commonplace. And all that easy money was often lost to gambling and prostitution. What goes up must come down, and soon enough the mines were depleted and the town was abandoned and fell into ruin. The bust began in 1881 and was accelerated in 1892 when a fire destroyed a portion of the town and again in 1917 when the railroads stopped running. Eventually, in 1932, a second fire destroyed half of the town. The last mine closed in 1942 and it was designated a state historical park in a state of "arrested decay" in 1962. Visitors can see the contents of the shops, saloons, houses, church, and hotels s they were when they were abandoned, so that the ghost town is truly frozen in time. The old buildings high in the California desert make for some amazing photographic content. What's not to like about America's most genuine gold-mining ghost town?