After our very disappointing experience in Deadwood—former ghost town turned into the worst of Vegas—we were apprehensive about the final stop on our tour of the West—Bodie. Bodie is known as something of the grand-daddy of all ghost towns in the American West, with over 200 standing structures, many of them in excellent repair. But we saddled up and headed down the dirt road to the State Park, with the literature assuring us that the town had been kept in a stat of “arrested decay” since it became a California State Park in 1962. We were blown away…

Even though we knew to expect a lot of buildings we still couldn’t believe our eyes as they lay spread out before us as we headed down from the parking lot. Everything from a historic stamp mill used in the mining process to the last standing church, mortuary, town hall, hotel and a few of the original 65 saloons along with dozens of other houses and shops.

And the wood was amazingly well preserved. Most of it was still a warm brown town which showed up well in photographs set off against the dry grass and weedy flowers. It was easy to shoot images even though we’d lost the early light—in the Summer the park opens at 9am, long after sunrise so there is no way to photograph it at sunrise or sunset at this time of year. Needless to say, I was like a kid in a candy store. It was hard to know where to start. There were plenty of opportunities to photograph details in the wood as well as some of the old junk in the yards as well as larger scale images of entire buildings and blocks.

Because Bodie is a little more modern than many ghost towns—the mine operated until the 1920’s I was intrigued by the trim and the large amount of glass, elements that are not too common in most ghost towns unless they’ve been restored.

Since we were visiting on a hot June weekend day conditions were a little dusty and a little crowded but with patience it was still possible to get wide angle scenes and even panoramas like the one above with hardly anyone in them. All in all a great detour on our visit to Mammoth Lakes and Mono Lake. Well worth it and definitely a place we’ll return.