Dust blows across an empty gravel road. Abandoned wooden buildings stare up at an empty bluff. Down the town’s long road, just past the church and collapsed bank, is an incline shaft. The shaft is dead, and so are the ghosts that supposedly haunt it and the town. This town, Bodie, hasn’t been alive since the 1950s.
Originally, Bodie was a mining camp founded by a handful of Californians, including Pat Garraty, William Boyle, Terrence Brodigan, and W. S. Bodey (who was the one to name Bodie). The group stumbled upon gold-filled ground around 1858, only to move on hoping to return in the spring. However, Bodey had other plans. With another companion, Bodey returned to the site with more supplies to survive the deathly winter. After winter passed and word of the fertile mines spread, the mining camp filled with more new inhabitants hoping to find great wealth.1.
Even though the mining camp was filling with people, it still lacked a name. It wasn’t until the following winter, in November of 1859, that Bodey died trapped in a blizzard while on a trip to get more supplies. In honor of his death, the camp would be called “Bodey’s Diggings” or “Bodey” for short, which would later be adapted to Bodie. 2.
But how did this mining camp grow into a town and then later into a ghost town?
With gold mining cities in close proximity to Bodie, the hunt for various ore in the area was on. Everyone wanted their own piece of the gold pie. In 1863 and 1864, mineralogist and geologist William P. Blake and Professor of Chemistry Benjamin Silliman traveled to Bodie to inspect the veins, concluding that “Bodie’s Mines showed great promise.”3 Soon after, the Empire Company purchased property in Bodie with the prospects of opening new mines, and the Bodie Bluff Consolidation Mining Company, the Bodie Consolidation Gold, and Silver Mining Company followed suit. The more companies invested into the site, the more the town grew in both population and profit. Bodie was starting to boom.4
The town grew as over 100 hand miners began to flow into Bodie along with at least 50 Empire Company workers. Already, two stores had opened and the preparation “for numerous whiskey mills and hash houses” was underway, as an onlooker from Inyo Country wrote in 1877. This sort of growth suggested that the town would grow to be more than just a mine, becoming instead a place for families to settle. Bodie was becoming a place for miners to make profit and for businesses as well. Stocks began to sell for one dollar a share, adding to the total profit of Bodie. 5
As more residents discovered gold, more men came into the town. By 1879, the population of Bodie was between 5,000 and 7,000.6With twenty-five mines open, the flow of money to miners was constant, incentivizing the hard working men to settle down. As predicted, Bodie was no longer just a mining town full of men looking to strike it rich. It was becoming an established town, in which families could move into alongside miners. Because of the permanent residents, the town had built up the Bodie House, a hotel, with the Miners Union Hall immediately behind it, and the Champion, Grand and Oakland House hotels provided housing, restaurants, and a barber shop. It was no longer a standard camp, set up for miners to dig, get their pay and leave. Solid buildings meant to last through the harsh winters were constructed, replacing temporary tents. The town had even acquired their own newspaper, The Daily Bodie News, as well as a real estate office immediately next door, ensuring incoming families that there would be permanent residency for them.7
It wasn’t until 1880 that Bodie started to show signs of decline. Single, young miners looking to strike rich, quickly grew tired of the wage pay that the Bodie mines had instilled. They began to move away to nearby mining towns where they were paid based on the quantity of gold mined, rather than on hours worked. Although family settlers remained, much of the mining workforce was beginning to branch off into other directions.8 Although there was a short revival with new technologies, mines still began to close. In previous years, production had reached as high as three million dollars in both gold and stock profit in 1881, 9 but by the early 1900s, profit had severely plummeted as workers left and mines became less productive. In 1914, the profit shrunk under $7,000, only spiking in the 1915 when there was an attempt to revive a previously closed mine. Although profits climbed back to $1oo,ooo, it would never equal the booming millions that the mines had originally experienced. Eventually costs would be too high for all mines to stay open. 10
Finally, World War II forced Bodie’s last producing mine to shut down. Mining never resumed once the war was over, but in 1961, the town was declared a National Historic Landmark. The following year, the state authorized Bodie to become its own State Historic Park. Today a total of 170 buildings survive in Bodie with just over 100 still standing perfectly intact. Each building has been preserved and remnants of the daily life of a Bodie citizen can still be seen inside each house and building. Even the mines have been preserved, and there are many tours that can take curious onlookers around the supposedly haunted ghost town. 11.
- Michael Piatt, Bodie: “The Mines Are Looking Well…” (Al Sonbrante, TX: North Bay Books, March 2003), 21. ↵
- Wikipedia, 2018, s.v.“Bodie, California” ↵
- Michael Piatt, Bodie: “The Mines Are Looking Well…” (Al Sonbrante, TX: North Bay Books, March 2003), 23. ↵
- Wikipedia, 2018, s.v.“Bodie, California”. ↵
- Michael Piatt, Bodie: “The Mines Are Looking Well…” (Al Sonbrante, TX: North Bay Books, March 2003), 39-41 ↵
- Wikipedia, 2018, s.v.“Bodie, California” ↵
- Michael Piatt, Bodie: “The Mines Are Looking Well…” (Al Sonbrante, TX: North Bay Books, March 2003), 88. ↵
- Wikipedia, 2018, s.v.“Bodie, California” ↵
- Michael Piatt, Bodie: “The Mines Are Looking Well…” (Al Sonbrante, TX: North Bay Books, March 2003), 41; Wikipedia, 2018, s.v.“Bodie, California” ↵
- Wikipedia, 2018, s.v.“Bodie, California” ↵
- California State Parks, State of California. “Bodie SHP.” CA State Parks. Accessed September 15, 2018. http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=509. ↵
50 comments
Maggie Amador
I had never heard of Bodie but there is something very interesting and eerie about ghost towns. I think the decline of Bodie is intriguing because it seemed as if it had so much promise in becoming more than just a mining town. I do like that the town has been preserved and I would love to visit it just to get a sense of what the past was like.
Gabriela Ochoa
I have never heard of this town but its story is amazing. To see a place go from nothing to a thriving city back to nothing is an interesting occurrence and the process in which it happens is also. To read the the town was abandoned because the price for finding gold was high and finding it was getting hard is sad because it could have continued to be a great city for people to live and thrive if they had just chosen to stay and look for other types of work.
Madison Downing
This was a very interesting article and I wonder what types of events transpired on the dirt roads that go through the ghost town of Bodie. I was so happy to read that they offer tours of the now historic landmark and hopefully that is something I can do in the future. It is sad to read how this blossoming town withered away because it couldn’t kept up with the growing world but how fascinating it is that there are some houses, perfectly intact, that symbolize the normal life of the old residents that settled in the town lost in time. What a great article it was extremely fun to read!
Richard Morales
It is interesting to learn about the ghost town of Bodie and how it is now a national park. I would like to some day make a trip to the place if I’m ever in California for an extended period of time. I’ve always been interested in the gold miners of the 19th century and I would like to see all the 100 buildings that are still perfectly intact.
Jabnel Ibarra
I’ve always loved reading about ghost stories and haunted places. Reading about the ghost town of Bodie now has me itching to plan a visit to the desolate town. This article was very well structured and written, as it has attracted my interest to visit a ghost town I had never heard of before reading this article.
Aneesa Zubair
I love your article! You do an excellent job of setting the tone for a bleak, empty ghost town. Bodie looks so deserted today that most people would probably never guess that it once held the “great promise” of gold and wealth. It’s also cool that Bodie’s buildings and mines have been preserved, and tourists can explore the town for ghosts.
Miguel Rivera
Ghost towns have always fascinated me, not because of the bizarreness of an empty town, but because at one point there used to be a hustle and bustle within. I visited Bombay Beach in California, which is a ghost town at the Salton Sea, and it was an eerie feeling. It used to be a top tourist destination, but then died down. Bodie, although being an old mining town, is no different to Bombay Beach. One day I may find myself visiting this town I had no idea about, thanks to this article.
Tyanne Pearcy
It is crazy how a place can have so much potential at one point and then completely end up being left behind like nothing happened. I have never heard of Bodie and it is interesting that no one else seems to now who lived or dies there. I would love to explore towns like this to find some history and dig into the mysterious depths of an unknown ghost town.
Victoria Rodriguez
This was an interesting read. I think that ghost towns are intriguing because most of them were once full of so much economic promise and for some reason or another they end up with no one living in them. It is also strange since the United States is so populated it is hard to grasp that people have not gone into these towns to populate them again. It is like a they are frozen in time when people stopped coming back to live there.
Bictor Martinez
I always love hearing about ghost towns. I find them so interesting just as this article. It is a shame that only so much gold was found in Bodie to not keep it alive for the future. The people who came in during the beginnings of this town were left unsatisfied and as a result, they left for a greater pay of work. It is also interesting how they preserve the town with the remains of past Brodie residents. I now want to go and visit this ghost town. Great article!