Bodie, California, one of the best ghost towns ever, has been on my photographic bucket list for at least 25 years. Today I finally got there and it didn’t disappoint. Well, not too much. Unfortunately, it has gotten very popular and unfortunately the timing of my trip put me there on a Saturday so I didn’t exactly have the place to myself.
The state park which is now Bodie doesn’t open until 9am. I was the second
car in line at 8:45. By the time I left around 11:30 the parking lot was full, there were about 10 cars lined up to pay the entrance fee and I must have passed at least 20 more coming up on my way down. There was a photography workshop there getting in the way of many of my pictures but still I persevered and got some good shots in spite of it all. I am thinking of giving it another go on the way back to catch the afternoon light and see if it is a little less crowded on a weekday.
I haven’t yet finished processing my pictures but I have enough to give you a taste of Bodie. Gold was first discovered here in 1859 but it wasn’t until the 1870s that a vein was found that made large scale mining profitable. Bodie boomed for about 10 to 15 years but by the 1890s the mines began to play out. A couple of fires put a few more nails in it’s coffin and by the 1940s the town was deserted and most of the land fell into the hands of the family that owned the bank.
In 1962 the family sold the land to California State Parks and they have
assumed an attitude of what they call arrested decay. Things have been left as they were when the residents left town and the rangers repair but do not restore the buildings. The cold dry climate at over 8000 feet elevation helps to keep Bodie somewhat intact.
Leaving Bodie to make my way to my next stop in Bishop I saw a lot of aspen, some past peak, some beautiful but surrounded by sagebrush so not very photogenic. I only found one patch worth stopping for and somehow the picture just doesn’t capture what I was seeing. I also tried to stop at Mono lake put I didn’t have the right parking permit and I couldn’t find where to get one and since it was mid day I didn’t expect the photos would have been that great anyway.