Bodie, California

Bodie, California is a ghost town located twenty miles east of Brigeport on Highway 270. At its peak in the early 1880s it was one of California's largest cities with nearly 10,000 residents. As the mines were depleted, the town's population eroded and it eventually became near deserted. In 1962, the city became Bodie State Historic Park. It has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and today attracts about 200,000 annual visitors.

Bodie is located on a high open plateau near the Nevada border at an elevation of 8,379 feet. Gold was first discovered in Bodie in 1859 by a group of prospectors including W.S. Bodey, from whom the city takes its name. Early mines proved unsustainable and failed. In 1876, a large deposit of gold–bearing ore was discovered in Bodie. The discovery transformed the city, which at the time was an isolated mining camp, into a Wild West boomtown. Additional rich discoveries in 1878 attracted more hopeful prospectors seeking their fortunes.

Bodie's population swelled to 7,000 residents by 1879. Bodie had many amenities of a large town including a railroad, two banks, a miner's union, a volunteer fire department, several daily newspapers, a red light district, chinatown, more than sixty saloons, several daily newspapers, a cemetery and a jail.

The exodus from Bodie began in the early 1880s. Prospectors moved on to other promising mining boomtowns. The mines' production in Bodie began to erode quickly in the late 1880s and by 1888, Bodie had a population of 500. Despite the declining population, Bodie still had several hundred permanent residents even after a fire ravaged much of the downtown business district in 1932. To protect against vandalism and what remained of the once booming city, the United States Department of the Interior recognized Bodie as a National Historic Site in 1961. Shortly therafter the Bodie State Historic Park opened.

Today, only a small portion of Bodie still survives. Visitors can walk the deserted streets of the former Wild West boomtown. Many of the building interiors remain unchanged from their heyday, still stocked with good from the 1880s. Bodie State Historic Park is open year round but the road to the town is often closed in the winter due to heavy snow. Bodie is one of America's best–preserved ghost towns and is well worth a visit!