long, rough and dusty - the road to Bodie

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photo by Donald Kinney

Been here before or not, when you arrive in Bodie--hopefully with all four wheels still intact--your first exclamation is going to be about the horrendous condition of the road you've just travelled.

Oh, there's two ways in, and the route from the west is slightly better than the route up from Mono Lake, but these two-lane paved mountain roads quickly turn into miles of dusty washboards.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Part of the dusty 12 mile route into Bodie from Mono Lake to the south.
And that's the town--all of what remains today of Bodie--only about 5 percent is left from what used to be a thriving metropolis with a pronounced wild and lawless western flavor back in the late 1800's.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Bodie is a mixture of old things and older things.



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photo by Donald Kinney

[source:  Wikipedia]
The first label of Bodie as a "ghost town" was in 1915. In a time when auto travel was on a rise, many were adventuring into Bodie via automobiles.

The first signs of an official decline occurred in 1912 with the printing of the last Bodie newspaper, The Bodie Miner. In a 1913 book titled California Tourist Guide and Handbook: authentic description of routes of travel and points of interest in California, the authors, Wells and Aubrey Drury described Bodie as a "mining town, which is the center of a large mineral region" and provided reference to two hotels and a railroad operating there.

The San Francisco Chronicle published an article in 1919 to dispute the "ghost town" label.

By 1920, Bodie's population was recorded by the US Federal Census at a total of 120 people.

Despite the decline, Bodie had permanent residents through most of the 20th century, even after a fire ravaged much of the downtown business district in 1932. A post office operated at Bodie from 1877 to 1942.

The last mine closed in 1942, due to War Production Board order L-208, shutting down all nonessential gold mines in the United States. Mining never resumed.



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