Bodie: 3 hours in this ghost town won’t disappoint you
“Goodbye God, I am going to Bodie”—a fascinating den of vice, isolated between California and Nevada.
Lost among gold, prostitutes, and Chinese laundries, Bodie lies abandoned since 1936, left exactly as it was by its last residents when they abandoned their dreams.
It’s not far, yet it feels lost in the middle of nowhere. The road eventually turns to dirt, and little by little, the atmosphere pulls us in. It’s easy to imagine a stagecoach arriving, and then, after a curve, the town appears before us in all its decayed splendor. Three hours in Bodie’s ghostly silence won’t disappoint.
Bodie truly is a ghost town.
It was deserted in 1936, after a fire dealt its final blow. But its end had been looming long before, with new mines, new technology, and new towns in more hospitable climates. Like many towns, Bodie takes its name from its founder, William S. Bodey, who discovered gold in these hills in 1859.
Twenty years later, Bodie was home to 10,000 residents.
A diverse population, including a substantial Chinese community, with a chronic shortage of “soul shepherds” who found few listeners here.
“Goodbye God, I am going to Bodie.”
A young girl wrote this in her school notebook; Bodie was a place teeming with adventurers, prostitutes, and gamblers. Many made a decent living, but few truly got rich. Miners earned good wages, but temptations were plenty, and life here—where everything had to be imported—was costly.
Abandoned in 1936, it remains a testament to an era, a fleeting phenomenon, an apex followed by a rapid, inevitable decline.
Today, it appears just as its residents left it. The paintings, furniture, stoves, even schoolbooks are still in place. Moving household goods was expensive, requiring wagons, horses, and paying duties. So many left with just a suitcase.
We entered softly.
With reverence, we crossed thresholds and peeked at personal belongings. We imagined hopes and disappointments, splendor and decay, living through a myth and carrying back with us the story of unknown lives. But most of all, we felt… the gold fever.
