The California ghost town of Bodie lies at 8,375 feet in the Bodie Hills, northeast of Yosemite National Park in the Eastern Sierras.
I'd been here before.
During the mid-1870s, prospectors had made a rich strike of gold and silver ore, and this mountain town boomed.
At its peak in 1879, Bodie had 8,500 citizens and 2,000 structures, including churches, schools, and homes - along with 60 saloons and dance halls.
But just two years later, the mines were played out. Bodie's residents drifted off in search of new opportunities - abandoning their homes, furnishings, even personal items.
Today, nearly 150 years later, Bodie remains in a similar state. It is an odd and interesting sight.
A few of Bodie's houses and buildings are open for viewing - so you can actually go in, walk across the creaking floor boards, and see a room's contents up close.
But most structures are locked; the only picture-taking access is through their window panes.
It was a very bright day, and reflections coming off the windows were a problem. After experimenting a bit, I found that if I set my lens tightly against the glass, very little outside light could get in - and I could capture a (mostly) clear image of a room and its contents.
Peering into these small rooms, you can imagine the residents cooking, putting a child to bed, talking about the events of the day, sharing their hopes and hardships.
So there's that. But for sure, there's also a high Creepiness Factor.
I also found that by lifting one side of the lens from the window just slightly, I could also let in certain reflections from the glass itself - vivid outdoor scenes that were off to the side or even behind me, out in the brilliant Sierra sun.
This enabled me to create a blended image: A room's interior along with exterior sky, buildings, and earth.
These blended photos reinforce the feeling that for the people of Bodie, "indoors" and "outdoors" were not so separate - that the intense weather, hard labor, and frequent violence of this gold-rush town were never more than a few feet away, just outside their thin wooden walls.
And this: Sooner rather than later, the town itself would give way, blending back into the earth and sagebrush of the Bodie Hills.
Here's my Bodie self-portrait:
I didn't intend to take a photo of myself, but as I was capturing a blended shot of this room and the scenery outside, I got in the way.
You can see the shape of my hat at the top; but then, this being Bodie, the rest is much harder to explain :-)
© 2026 Mark Smith