Bodie Revisited

New images of a gold-rush ghost town

By Mark Smith

January 7^th, 2025

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.

A brief history. Like, really brief.

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.

Trapping light

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.

Living the mining life

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.

Using the reflections

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.