by Len Wilcox
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Desert Destinations 
The Killing Trail
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In the shadow of the eastern Sierra Nevada, squatting in the barren hills between Lee Vining and Hawthorne, is the ghost of the town of Bodie, California. Once the home of 10,000 miners, gamblers, townspeople, and ruffians, Bodie today is a silent wood and brick monument to the American west. The barren hills around Bodie are dotted with sagebrush and abandoned mines. Gold and silver made Bodie, and the end of the main streak of gold killed Bodie. But during its heyday in the late 1800's Bodie was the exemplary gold strike town, with booms and busts, sudden riches and sudden death. It was the town that made men rich and made them poor, and held a gunfight nearly every day of its existence. But before there was a town - in 1859, just before the war and when there was nothing but sagebrush and hills, Indians, a few mountain men and wandering prospectors - a gent by the name of Bill Bodey panned the small stream that cuts through the hills north of Mono Lake. With three other wanderers, he struck a little gold; they followed the flakes upstream till the lay of the land told them they'd found the source. There, they posted claims and started digging. Bill Bodey was a character that most people stood upwind from. About 5 feet 7 inches tall, one contemporary described him as the dirtiest person he'd ever met. He was from Poughkeepsie, New York, where he'd been a tinsmith before walking out on a wife and six children to go prospecting. Bodey partnered with Black Taylor, a 4 foot 9 inch tall Cherokee. During the winter of 1859-1860, they built a cabin over their claim, and had to haul supplies from Monoville, north of Mono Lake, to their strike.
The original strike was made in 1859. There wasn't much to it, however; richer and more promising strikes in nearby Aurora (about 17 miles east) left Bodie in the dust. Only a few diehards kept working the dirt in the played-out Bodie mines. A few families lived in a few rough small shelters throughout the 1860's and early 70's. But in 1876, the town's fortunes changed. A freak cave-in at the Bunker Hill mine exposed a rich body of gold ore. The hardcore Bodie miners were vindicated, and a boom began that built a city overnight. When word of the vein reached nearby towns, the rush began and Bodie became the newest boom town, and the last of the gold rush era. By the end of 1878 over 600 buildings stood where just two years before stood only a few ramshackle cabins. The town, and the legend, of Bodie was born. Grant Smith came to Bodie in 1879 at the age of 14. He worked as a telegraph messenger boy, and years later, published an account of his years in Bodie. He said: "Bodie was unique; it was the last of the old time mining camps; the last of the pioneer days in California. The leading spirits of the town were 'mining camp men' from California an Nevada. these were eager, young adventurers from the ends of the earth." Mining camp men were the hangers-on of the gold rush days. They were doctors, lawyers, gamblers, bartenders, merchants, and camp followers. they followed the prospectors and miners to build a town where the miners could dispose of the their gold and silver. Smith says that "These men were virile, enthusiastic, and free livers; bound by few rules of conventional society, though with an admirable code of their own: Liberal minded, generous to a fault, square dealing, and devoid of pretense and hypocrisy. Besides the business and professional men, there were hundreds of saloon keepers, hundreds of gamblers, hundreds of prostitutes, many chinese, and an unusual number of what we called 'Bad Men'. The Bad Man From Bodie' was a current phrase of the time throughout the west. In its day, Bodie was more widely known for its lawlessness than for its riches." Bodie did indeed have a reputation for wildness. These 'Bad Men' were men with the bark on, men who, in the words of western writer Louis Lamour, wore out their clothes from the inside-out. In his Guide to Bodie and Eastern Sierra Historic Sites, George Williams III describes a war of words between a Truckee newspaper and a Bodie newspaper. The Truckee paper printed a prayer from a little girl whose family was moving to Bodie: "Goodbye, God! We are going to Bodie." The Bodie paper said the Truckee paper got it wrong; the prayer was actually "Good, by God! We are going to Bodie." Bodie was a magnet for all kinds of people during its short shining days. Gold and silver were plentiful; jobs were readily available and paid exceptionally well. But Bodie, at least in its early days, was lacking in comforts outside of the bars and the red light district. According to Smith's account, "All of the conditions in Bodie tended to make men reckless. They were in a remote, barren, sparsely settled country - " a land that God forgot" - practically without government and law. It was a refuge for the lawless, with almost no conveniences of living...". The town had "poor housing, limited water supply, no sanitary regulations, a harsh climate, forbidding surroundings, (there were no) warm cheerful places to go except the saloons (and the) red light district." At this time in Bodie's history there were no hospitals, no churches, and no theaters; many people lived in tents in the surrounding hills. |
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So Bodie was the wild and woolly west, at its best and its worst. It was a place to get rich, or maybe to die. The streets were always busy, day and night. Ore wagons hauled rock to the mills, wood wagons brought lumber to feed the mines.
Stagecoaches brought fresh grist for the Bodie mill, and stages left loaded with bullion, guarded with stern-faced gunmen. Crowds of hardcases roamed the streets, a lusty crowd, boisterous with the hard-charging ways of life on the edge.
The law in Bodie was a careful group of deputies appointed by the sheriff in the county seat located many miles away. While it was a rowdy town, most of Bodie knew its place; the rowdies generally confined themselves to the red light district. The families of Bodie were seldom bothered by the gunfights - of which there was an average of one a day.
Cold-blooded murders were not common. Gunfights, however, were. The number of men killed in gunfights in Bodie is estimated at several hundred. It was the town that was served a dead man for breakfast nearly every day.
Even though violence was common, there were no bank or store robberies, no burglaries, and little petty theft. Even the violence was contained to the red light district and the saloons; if one stayed away from these danger spots, Bodie was a reasonably safe place.
Smith claims that "One of the remarkable things about Bodie... ...was the respect shown by even the worst characters to the decent women and the children. Some of the best families in town lived (next to the) red light district, and the women and children could not move out of their houses without passing saloons and all sorts of terrible places. Yet I do not recall ever hearing of a respectable woman or young girl being in any manner insulted or even accosted by the hundreds of dissolute characters that were everywhere. In part, this was due to the respect that depravity pays to decency; in part to the knowledge that sudden death would follow any other course."
According to Smith, "one learned more about human nature in a few years than could be acquired in a city in a lifetime. There one saw the human animal in the raw. Yet, taking them for all in all, their virtues outweighted their vices. Their sins were mostly against themselves; their better natures showed in their attitude toward others. Somehow, all of the people - even those without the pale of mining camp respectability - showed some admirable traits. Ordinary men became transformed in that atmosphere."
Bodie's best days were short - from 1879 to 1882. The boom ended, but there was still some mining to be done; the population of the town fell to around 2,000 and was around 700 to 1000 in the 1890's. Bodie didn't die till 1914 when all mining stopped for the duration of World War 1. There has been some mining in the area since, but no major strikes have been found.
The state park service took over Bodie in 1962. Rangers and volunteers have maintained and rebuilt about 5% of the structures which once stood in Bodie, to the delight of thousands of visitors annually. There is a museum in the old miner's union hall and several displays have been built, utilizing only the furnishings of the time.
Now, through the empty streets of Bodie, where fortunes were made and lost, where men died in gunfights and lived by the cut of the deck, the wind whispers and sighs through the deserted buildings. It's easy to imagine the ghosts of Black Taylor and Bill Bodey watching tourists wander their town, cameras strung around their necks instead of six-guns on their hips. Bodie stands as a testimony to them all - bad men and builders, miners and players - who lived the legends of the west.
Note: This article was excerpted from the book Desert Dancing by Len Wilcox -- Click for a special offer for an autographed copy. |
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During one such trip a blizzard blew in, with raw cold and sharp winds. During the long hard journey, Bodey collapsed. Black Taylor tried to save his partner, but was unable to carry the larger man to shelter and Bodey froze to death. The that which grew from Bodey's claim was named for him, even if the spelling was rather casual.
