The curse of Bodie: legacy of ghost-town ghosts? - Bodie, California - Investigative Files

Today, the ghost town of Bodie, California, is one of the most authentic abandoned gold-mining towns of the Old West (figure 1). It is also reputed to be a "ghost" town in another sense: Some claim, according to a TV documentary, that Bodie is inhabited by ghosts who guard the town against pilferers (Beyond 2000). Supposedly, a visitor who dares to remove any artifact can be plagued by the dreaded "curse of Bodie."

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Boom Town

The 1849 discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in the western Sierra foothills lured men and women to California from across the United States and indeed the world. Prospectors equipped with picks, shovels, and the ubiquitous gold pans searched for placer deposits--loose flakes and nuggets that have eroded and washed into streams.

These deposits were searched for by "panning" (an art I once learned in the Yukon) in which the lighter dirt is deftly washed out, leaving behind the flakes of "color" that are collectively called "gold dust." The discovery of sufficient placer deposits sparked quests for the "mother lode," involving hardrock mines laboriously dug, blasted, and shored up with timber (Williams 1992, 5; Smith 1925).

A decade after the gold rush began at Sutter's Mill, four prospectors made a rich strike on the opposite side of the Sierras--that is, in the eastern foothills. They agreed to keep the discovery secret until the following spring, but one, W.S. Bodey, returned with another man, a half-Cherokee named "Black" Taylor. Having traveled to Monoville for supplies, the pair were returning to their cabin when they were caught in a blizzard and Bodey perished.

Named for its discoverer, camp Bodey was soon rechristened "Bodie" when (according to local lore) a sign painter misspelled the word and the new version was preferred (Bodie 2001; Misspelling 2003). At first Bodie was largely neglected due to other strikes in the area. Mark Twain was among the gold seekers who rushed to nearby Aurora, Nevada, for instance.

However, Bodie eventually boomed. In 1876, a freak mine cave-in exposed a valuable body of gold, and the Standard Consolidated Mining Company responded with a large investment in equipment and lumber. Another rich strike followed in 1878 in the Bodie Mine, which, in just six weeks, shipped gold bullion worth a million dollars. Meanwhile, Bodie grew rapidly, with boarding houses, restaurants, saloons, and other enterprises springing up (Williams 1992, 9-10).

Camps like Bodie attracted a breed of adventurous types:

   Besides the business and professional
   men, mine-operators, miners, etc.,
   there were hundreds of saloon-keepers,
   hundreds of gamblers, hundreds
   of prostitutes, many Chinese, a considerable
   number of Mexicans, and an
   unusual number of what we used to
   call "Bad men"--desperate, violent
   characters from everywhere, who lived
   by gambling, gun-fighting, stage robbing,
   and other questionable means.
   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. (Smith 1925)

There were other perils and hardships, including the savage winter of 1878-1879 in which hundreds died of exposure and disease, and mining accidents that claimed victims by falling timber, the explosion of a powder magazine, and other means (Smith 1925; Bodie Cemetery n.d.).

Given Bodie's reputation, it is perhaps not surprising that one little girl, whose family was moving to the mining town, reportedly prayed: "Goodbye God! We are going to Bodie" (Smith 1925).

Decline

Hardships and violence aside, Bodie was a thriving, bustling place, containing some 600 to 800 buildings and a population that reached over 10,000 (Williams 1992, 10; Johnson and Johnson 1967, 20). As it appeared about 1880,

   The traffic in the
   streets was continuous
   and enlivening. There
   were trains of huge,
   white-topped "prairie-schooners,"
   bringing
   freight from the railroad, each drawn
   by twenty or more horses or mules,
   and pulling one or two large, four-wheeled
   "trailers"; ore wagons, hauling
   ore down the canyon to the mills;
   wood wagons bringing huge loads of
   pine-nut from long distances, for the
   mines and mills and for general use;
   hay wagons, lumber wagons, prospecting
   outfits, nondescript teams of
   all descriptions, spanking teams driven
   by mine superintendents' horses
   ridden by everybody, and most exciting
   of all, the daily stages that came
   tearing into town and went rushing
   out; the outgoing stages often carrying
   bars of bullion, guarded by stern,
   silent men, armed with sawed-off
   shotguns loaded with buckshot....
   (Smith 1925)

However, like other boom towns, Bodie's period of glory was brief, lasting from 1879 to 1882. The decline was slow, with the two major mines--the Bodie and the Standard--merging in 1887 and operating successfully for the next two decades. A disastrous fire struck in 1892 and--with a steady decline in the interim, including additional mine closings and abandonment of the Bodie Railway in 1917--another devastating fire destroyed much of the town in 1932 (Johnson and Johnson 1967, 20-21).