Voices from Bodie

Of the many Western gold towns of the late Nineteenth Century, Bodie was more challenging than most such towns. It set an informal population record estimated at over 10,000 in 1880, making it the third largest city in California. It developed a reputation, deserved or not, as the wildest, most lawless boomtown. Its only purpose was to produce gold.

Set in the harsh treeless peaks of the Eastern Sierra, at an elevation of 8300', it presented few frills, many hardships, and a stark contrast between wild nightlife and monotonous mining and milling True, the residents attempted to banish the loneliness and monotony of goldtown life. They organized Fourth of July celebrations, Valentine's Day balls, baseball teams, even horse races on an improvised race track. But isolation, boredom, and hardship often won the battle.

Why silent monologues?

When we are allowed to hear people expressing their ideas, beliefs, hopes, and fears to themselves, as contrasted to conversation which requires them to "...prepare a face to meet the faces that they meet," sometimes we encounter a rare kind of honesty. Not always is this true, but it occurs enough to qualify as stream of consciousness. So in these eight chapters, including a lynching, a murder, infidelity, and a brave defiance of social and political custom, you will hear the inner thoughts, fears, hopes, and dreams of ordinary people, and a few not so ordinary, as they lived through, coped with, or succumbed to these events.

All photography was done by the author.