Bodie ghost town (August 30, 2021)

More than 200 original structures remain in the ghost town of Bodie, reminiscent of the bygone era of saloon fights and Wild West bandits.  What I loved was the springs under the floor in the dance hall, to put a little bounce in those dance steps.

Bodie was a boom town starting in 1875, when a rich body of gold ore was discovered.  In its heyday, there were 30 different mines and nine stamp mills.  Along with miners and merchants, Bodie attracted a rougher element who gave the town a reputation for bad men and wild times. There were more than 60 saloons.  Mining continued until 1942. 

My maternal grandfather Alex Damon Meek had gas pumps like these for his tractors and trucks.  Memories! In 1962, California State Parks purchased the town to preserve the historic buildings and artifacts.  There are houses built in the 1870s, the Standard Mill from the late 1890s, gas pumps from the 1920s, and a schoolhouse that was used until 1942.

Tom and I toured the Standard Consolidated Mining Company's Stamp Mill with a park ranger.  Just him and us.  Heavy iron rods called stamps broke up quartz rock containing gold and silver. Mercury (and later cyanide) was used to separate the metals from the crushed rock. The mill yielded more than $18 million over 38 years.

The mill provided gold for the U.S. government.  To discourage robberies on the long train ride east, ingots of gold were mixed with silver, resulting in a gray rather than gold color.  The mixed ingots weighed a lot more than pure gold ingots, something like 120 pounds each.  Hard to carry more than away on horseback even if the train robbery worked.