Bodie's Gold : Tall Tales and True History from a California Mining Town

The Bodie Mining District was established in 1860 after the discovery of several small gold deposits in the area.

The big boom did not begin until 1878, however, when new discoveries and the arrival of highly capitalized mining companies made possible the exploitation of Bodie's significant mineral wealth.

For a time, the town's population grew by ten people a day, the mines extracted several million dollars worth of gold, and Bodie flourished.

It was both a rough mining camp, which had for a time the highest murder rate in the U.S., and a town where ordinary families lived secure and contented lives and a highly respectable social network supported cultural programs and charitable works.

The boom ended in 1880, and the town began its long, slow decline, surviving into the twentieth century as a small town supported by a few small but steady mines.

Mining ended with World War II, and the last permanent residents moved away.

What remained of the town was named a California state park in 1964.

In Bodie's Gold, author Marguerite Sprague covers all the details of Bodie life. Enhanced with numerous historic photographs and quotations from newspapers of that period, as well as by the reminiscences or former residents, Bodie's Gold is lively reading, a vivid account of the life that once throbbed behind the now-closed doors and empty streets of California's official Gold Rush ghost town.