Ghosts

Not long after we moved out west, I discovered the ghost town at Bodie, CA, and immediately added it onto my "bucket list." But my plans to visit in 2020 were a bit...delayed...by certain viral disruptions. It's also quite remote, and inaccessible by road for many months out of the year because it's above 8,000 feet elevation. In fact, Bodie takes the temperature shift concept to the extreme -- it has an average of over 300 nights below freezing every year! A visit from my mother and sister gave us the perfect excuse to finally make the trek, but as we trundled along the last three miles of unpaved road at the end of several hours of driving, I struggled to imagine who would want to live in such a place in the late 1800's, when transportation was significantly harder. Despite being June, there was snow forecast the day after we visited.

Ghost towns are fascinating to me, time capsules of a history that's foreign to my experience. Normally a town isn't deserted in such short order -- if one industry fails, there are others to take its place or support its loss. But these towns existed for one thing, and one thing only: mines and money. When the mines dried up, the miners left and the entire town infrastructure, which existed purely for the needs of the miners, collapsed. Because mines are often very remote, there was really no reason for anyone to stay. At at its height, Bodie was home to 10,000 people (and 65 saloons); from 1860 to 1941 it produced the modern-day equivalent of $85,000,000 of gold. But its "boom" days lasted only a few years, and it spent most of its history in gradual decline. 

You can spot the little Methodist church, which was painted white at the time, on the lower left.
This photo is from 1890, well after the boom had ended.

The drive to Bodie included some absolutely stunning scenery, including Mono lake and a mountain meadow dotted with wildflowers. As we approached, a herd of antelope were grazing in a meadow just past the entrance.

A view of Mono Lake as we left Bodie

To give you a little perspective, those tiny mountain tops you see just over the horizon in the photo below? They're the mountains you see in the phot of Mono Lake, on the north-eastern edge of Yosemite, and range from 11,000 to 13,000 feet. 

We finally spotted a mountain bluebird! 

Cliff swallows had also made nests on some of the houses -- beautiful birds, with remarkable nests!

I wish we'd had more time there, but tired little legs kept us from outstaying our welcome! I'll let the rest of the photos speak for themselves: