Bodie was called the "most lawless, wildest and toughest mining camp the far west has ever known." It is said that murders were an almost daily occurrence, as were robberies, stage holdups, and street fights.

Red Light District
During its peak from the late 1870s to early 1880s, the boomtown boasted a population of about 10,000 people and 2,000 buildings. There were 65 saloons and dance halls on the mile-long, main street; seven breweries churned out beer 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Whiskey was delivered by horse-drawn carriage, 100 barrels at a time. Two streets that comprised the red light district were Maiden Lane and Virgin Alley.

The town's reputation for violence and wild living was so bad that when the parents of one little girl told her that they were going to move there, she wrote in her diary, "Good-bye God, I'm going to Bodie."

Gold
Prospector Waterman S. Bodey and his partner, Black Taylor, discovered gold in Bodie during the summer of 1859; the following year the Bodey Mining District was formed. Things developed slowly until a rich strike in 1877 that drew people by the thousands. Ultimately, the Bodie hills produced more than $32 million in gold and nearly $7 million in silver.

The town is situated in a remote and barren mountain basin at 8,368 feet in elevation, a location that miners called "the worst climate out of doors." (Bodie records the lowest temperature in the contiguous 48 states more often than anyother location.) Bodey himself died just a few months after his discovery when he was caught in a sudden November blizzard. In 1862, residents officially changed the town's name to "Bodie" to ensure proper pronunciation.

How to Find Bodie
Located about 50 miles south of Lake Tahoe in eastern California near the Nevada border, this once infamous mining community is now a State Historic Park and the largest ghost town in the western United States. Bodie is being preserved in "arrested decay;" this means that while no construction or renovation work is being done, what exists there now is being protected to whatever extent is feasible with available personnel and money.

Two fires ripped through the business district in 1892 and 1932, burning down nearly 90% of the town's wooden buildings, but there are still 60 structures left standing and plenty of interesting remnants to explore and photograph.

Photos by Mark McLaughlin