Cookie and I were looking for an adventure one day, and a ghost town surely fit the bill. The “ghost town” of Bodie, Calif., is an old gold mining town from the 1800s about 13 miles outside of Bridgeport, Calif.
The last residents reportedly left Bodie a little over 50 years ago. To preserve the town’s history, California made Bodie’s ruins a state historic park in 1962. Today, about 200,000 people visit every year.
The Bodie brochure says that the town of 100 buildings, is about 5 percent of what it was in its heyday in the 1800s. Still, it’s easy to get a sense of what it once was. We imagined residents shopping in the stores on a bustling Main Street, then walking home to fix dinner and sit by the fire. The historic park is being maintained in a state of “arrested decay.” Rangers repair the buildings as needed, including fixing dry wall and roofs.
Cookie and I spent a few hours just wandering among the different structures, using the brochure’s map to guide us. If you follow the map, you’ll learn about some of the town’s residents, like Charlie Donnelly, the butcher who married an English artist, and Harvey Boone, a descendant of Daniel Boone. The map also marks the remains of the town jail, where bail was $5, and Chinatown, where several hundred people once lived.
Most buildings were not sturdy enough for visitors to enter, but we could peek through the windows to see inside.
The Methodist church, built in 1882, was one of the first buildings we found to enter, though just to stand in the foyer to take pictures. The pews remain just as they had in the early part of the 20th century. A small pipe organ stands in one corner. Apparently, the Ten Commandments on oilcloth, which used to hang behind the pulpit, was stolen.
Clearly, Bodie is no longer a boisterous mining town. In fact, at many of the buildings, visitors spoke in hushed tones as they peered through the windows or stepped inside for a closer look.
Stores along the main street still had wares on the counters, including household goods, bottles and dolls. The remains of an early gas station were an unexpected sight, but it makes sense if people were still living there a little over 50 years ago.
Inside the homes, we saw decaying mattresses on beds with springs, pots and pans in the kitchen, spindly desks under layers of dust. My daughter noticed how short the beds were and that the chairs were smaller than ours. Apparently, we grow folks bigger these days.
The schoolhouse retains its desks as well as a cracked and worn globe. At the front of the classroom, a poem remains on a stand, starting out, “O Sam, see the pretty dog! John will not let him run.”
Off to one side of the town stood the mill, which employed many during the town’s heyday. The buildings there are unstable, so that part is closed off to visitors.
There are no commercial enterprises at Bodie. The state wants to preserve its ghost town atmosphere. So pack your own lunch and bring plenty of water; it’s pretty dusty walking the dirt roads. However, there are flush toilets at the entrance and outhouses inside the park.
(We didn’t actually see any ghosts in Bodie. But who knows what happens when the sun goes down …. mwahhahahahah!)
5 tips for Bodie with kids:
— Have your child use the map to guide you through the town.
— Rather than lecture about the town, ask your child questions. What do they think a building was used for? Why might residents have left?
— If your child gets bored, let him or her take pictures or videos of the town. Cookie loved shooting video and discussing what she saw.
–Pack plenty of cold water. Walking the dirt roads is dusty, and water will help keep them going.
–Keep kids with you on the paths. Broken glass and other hazards lie in the grass.
Kidsized Travel 