Don’t be scared – we didn’t mean proper ghosts! Bodie Ghost Town isn’t a huge haunted attraction. Nope! When we say ghost town, we mean that it USED to be a hustling, bustling town but then one day the people just left. It’s an incredible experience.
Bodie Ghost Town, otherwise known as Bodie Ghost Town, is a authentic California gold-mining ghost town. In 1875, a mine cave-in revealed that all precious gold, which led to the purchase of the mine in 1877. After that, there were fortunes to be made! People FLOCKED to the town and transformed it into a boomtown. At one point it had a population of nearly 10,000 people!
Only a small part of the town survives today, mainly because the buildings are delicate and built from wood. Some of the buildings you can actually walk up and look inside, and still see jackets hanging up, chairs at the dining table, and goods on the shelves. It’s a very bizarre experience! The town is preserved in a state of “arrested decay”, and is only home today to the howling winds (and yes, maybe an occasional ghost…)
You can take a 50 minute walk through one of the most intact Stamp Mills in the state, where kids can learn all about how the gold was extracted from quartz and transformed into bullion bars. You can also see the machine shop, amalgam tables, electrical room and might stamps. There are a maximum of 25 people on these tours so you will be in nice small groups.
A fascinating insight into American history, and kids will literally be stepping back in time to see how a 19th century gold mine town looked – an amazing family day out!
Great place to visit if you like history
A must see place. To just imagine the hardships these people faced to get gold out of the mines, and then spend it in the numerous saloons in the town. This is the WILD WEST…..At over 9,000 ft above sea level, the winters there are brutal and the summers are dry & hot.
A real ghost town – I like that it is not right off a highway thus protecting it somewhat.The best ghost town sites are the ones that are difficult to get to. Bodie isnt that hard to access, just a long slow road…big deal. Once there, imagine the thousands that lived there, along with the daily shootings, gambling, drinking, red light district and oh by the way, the very harsh effort of simply living. Even your firewood for heating/cooking had to be imported from no-so-nearby forests.Over the hill is Aurora which is far more difficult to reach, but also worthwhile.Remember, most ‘real’ ghost town and mining sites have little left other than the slight depressions where buildings once sat, a faint foundation perimeter of local stones (if a lucrative site), or simply the absence of sage where roads once were. If you are lucky, you see a collapsed building or stone basement. So, for Bodie to have many buildings intact is quite rare, especially since the town suffered fires that destroyed most buildings.Best thing to do is research a given site before you visit, so you can imagine the way things and people once were compared to what you experience in the present. Talk to locals and rangers if present and you can really get a feel for what the site was like.Have fun, pick up a piece of someone else’s litter and leave no trace!
My grandson likes Brodie so much he looks at pitchures he does research on it to
I’ve been to Bodie twice, and the second time was the more enriching of the two experiences. I suspect that like most things, the more you know about a subject, the better your appreciation. The first time I saw this ghost town, I knew nothing about it. The second visit found me a wiser man — unfortunately, also one whose mobility was not what it once was, and Bodie is a place that requires a sturdy pair of legs to fully enjoy. The town spreads over a large area — it was a town of 10,000 at one time, after all. Most of the streets are up or downhill as well. There is a good museum for smaller artifacts, such as old time crockery, at least one pistol, and a pair of Victorian era hearses too delicate to be left out in the extreme climate at 8,300 feet. If one can, it pays to visit the mills, the train station, the cemeteries and hike up Bodie Creek for outlying buildings. Don’t plan on a winter visit, however. The 15 foot snow drifts cover almost all the surviving sights.