Bodie State Historic Park

The town takes its name from Waterman S. Body, a prospector who found small amounts of gold in these hills in 1859. For years it stayed a minor camp, but in 1875 a mine cave-in exposed a rich body of ore, and when the Standard Company bought in and struck pay dirt in 1877, Bodie exploded. Between roughly 1877 and 1882 it boomed into a full-blown town of close to 8,000 people, one of the biggest and rowdiest in the West.

At its height Bodie had more than 2,000 buildings scattered across the rolling ground: as many as 70 saloons, dance halls, gambling halls, general stores, hotels, churches, and around 200 restaurants, along with a bowling alley and a busy main street. Over its life the district produced more than 38 million dollars in gold and silver, an enormous sum in its day, and Bodie earned a lasting reputation as one of the wildest boomtowns of the gold-rush era.

Boomtowns burn hot and fade fast, and Bodie was no exception. By the mid-1880s the richest ore was thinning and miners drifted off to the next strike, and although the mines kept working on and off for decades, the town's population fell year after year. Fires took chunks of the business district, and the brutal winters at over 8,000 feet, with deep snow and fierce wind, made simply living here a hardship once the easy money was gone.

Mining sputtered along into the 20th century and finally stopped for good, and one family at a time the town emptied out until only a caretaker or two remained. Because Bodie was so remote and so high, nothing was built to replace it, so the abandoned buildings simply stood on the plateau, drying out in the thin mountain air, waiting.

In 1962 Bodie became both a National Historic Site and a California State Historic Park, and the state made an unusual and now famous choice: to preserve the town in a state of arrested decay. That means the buildings are kept exactly as they were when the parks department took them over, with repairs made only enough to keep a structure from collapsing, and never to improve, restore, or modernize it. A leaning wall is braced, not straightened; a faded sign is left to fade.

The effect is haunting and honest. Inside the buildings, still-furnished rooms hold pool tables, store stock, school desks, and the ordinary clutter of interrupted lives, all visible through the glass. Walking the streets you get the genuine melancholy of a real dead town rather than the tidy story of a restored one, which is why Bodie is often called the best-preserved ghost town in the American West and why it draws people willing to drive a long way to see it.

Bodie lies off US 395 in the Eastern Sierra, reached by State Route 270 east from the highway near Bridgeport; the last few miles are unpaved gravel. In the warm months the road is manageable for most vehicles, but it is high, exposed country, so bring water, sun protection, and a wind layer even in summer. In winter the snow shuts the road, and the park is reached only by those willing to ski or snowshoe the last stretch, so most visitors come between late spring and fall.

Once there, plan on walking. A self-guided route leads through the town, and interpretive information and seasonal ranger tours, including tours of the stamp mill up the hill, help fill in the story. Look through the windows, follow the dirt streets, and take nothing but photographs, since everything is protected exactly where it sits. Give yourself a couple of unhurried hours to feel the scale of the place, a whole city of gold that the mountains simply took back.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.