Bodie Ghost Town.
Bodie is now a ghost town in the Bodie Hills east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California – about 75 miles southeast of Lake Tahoe.
In 1876, a profitable deposit of gold-bearing ore was discovered, which transformed Bodie from an isolated mining camp comprising a few prospectors and company employees to a Wild West boomtown.
Rich discoveries in the adjacent Bodie Mine during 1878 attracted even more hopeful people. By 1879, Bodie had a population of approximately 5000–7000 people and around 2,000 buildings. Bodie had a Chinatown, the main street of which ran at a right angle to Bodie’s Main Street, with several hundred Chinese residents at one point, and included a Taoist temple. Opium dens were plentiful in this area. Over the years, Bodie’s mines produced gold valued at nearly US$34 million.
The first signs of an official decline occurred in 1912 with the printing of the last Bodie newspaper, The Bodie Miner. In 1913, the Standard Consolidated Mine closed. Mining profits in 1914 were at an all time low of $6,821.
Bodie is now an authentic Wild West ghost town. The town was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, and in 1962 it became Bodie State Historic Park. A total of 170 buildings remain, and Bodie has been named California’s official state gold rush ghost town.
