A Brief History
(continued)
By Michael H. Piatt, author of
Bodie: "The Mines Are Looking Well ..."
An Industry
to Mine Gold
Beginning
late in 1881, the Bodie Railway & Lumber Company
delivered cordwood and timbers to Bodie's mines and
mills. The railroad never owned any passenger coaches,
and its tracks never reached downtown nor the outside
world. Its only commodity was wood from forests south
of Mono Lake. Trains ran seasonally until the rails,
locomotives, and rolling stock were scrapped in 1917.
(Emil Billeb collection. Courtesy, Vickie Daniels)
Powered by steam and fueled by wood,
Bodie's mines demanded cordwood that the Bodie Railway &
Lumber Company delivered from the Sierra foothills over
its newly-built narrow-gauge railroad. The trains also supplied
heavy timbers to support the expanding underground. The
call for wood became intense after 14 mines installed steam-powered
pumps that would allow their shafts to extend below the
water line. Meanwhile, Bodie's nine quartz mills dropped
159 rock-crushing stamps on its ore. But a shortage of pay
rock idled some mills almost immediately, and others ran
only part time. Many mines that appeared promising during
the excitement were abandoned within a year or two, leaving
only a few companies still producing bullion. Faced with
impending winter weather and little hope of employment,
disappointed fortune seekers began leaving in droves after
realizing in late 1880 that Bodie's ore bodies would sustain
only a few profitable mines and a small but steady work
force. "A quiet town is Bodie today," observed
the Evening Miner in February 1883.6
Long Years
of Decline
Introduced
to this country in 1890, the cyanide process revolutionized
gold and silver production across the West by dissolving
precious metals out of crushed rock, an improvement
over mercury amalgamation employed by Bodie's stamp
mills. Cyanide vats are shown under construction near
the Standard mill in 1898. (Practical Notes on
the Cyanide Process.Courtesy, Engineering and
Mining Journal)
For three more decades a handful of
mines supported a population of about 800, mostly wage-earning
miners and their families. Bodie's deepest mineshaft, the
Standard, reached the 1,200-foot level in April 1882, followed
by the Lent in January 1888. But instead of bonanza veins,
miners found only ore too poor to cover the cost of fueling
the powerful Cornish pumps that kept the lower levels dry.
Forced to abandon pumping, miners returned to the upper
levels to remove low-grade ore they once disregarded as
not worth the cost of mining.
Ever-diminishing returns compelled the Standard Company
to reduce expenses in 1893 by building one of the country's
earliest long-distance electric transmission lines that
delivered cheap power from a small hydroelectric plant 12½
miles away in the Sierra foothills. At the same time, the
recently introduced cyanide process yielded new profits,
initially from old mill tailings, then from low-grade ore.
But despite new technology, the deepest levels were not
reopened and Bodie never boomed again. The once-wealthy
Bodie Company, its ore bodies depleted, sold out to the
Standard in 1896. Then the Standard gave up in 1913. Only
five companies at Bodie ever paid dividends: the Standard,
Bodie, Bulwer, Syndicate, and Mono. The Standard proved
to be Bodie's most prolific mine, producing slightly more
than $18 million in gold and silver, and paying just over
$5 million in dividends during its 37-year life.7
Despite
improved technology, Bodie's wealthiest company, the
Standard, survived only until 1913. Main Street is
seen ghostly and nearly deserted in 1927. (Burton
Frasher photograph. Courtesy, Bancroft Library, University
of California, Berkeley)
For a few years thereafter, lowly prospectors and an occasional
highly financed mining concern tried wringing profits out
of Bodie's desolate hills, to no avail. Treadwell-Yukon,
representing a multi-national mining conglomerate, reopened
the Red Cloud Mine in 1929 and installed electric pumps to drain
the 870-foot shaft. But the firm suffered heavy losses and
left after two years. The mining district and the town it
once supported were nearly abandoned by the time fire ravaged
Main Street in 1932. Roseklip, Bodie's last large-scale
recovery operation, brought in the latest machinery, not
to mine underground, but to treat piles of rock discarded
at the entrances to old tunnels and shafts. Instead of rebuilding
the town, however, company employees found lodging among
buildings still standing after the fire. World War II closed
the plant after a six-year run, leaving Bodie abandoned
once again. When it was over, California's Division of Mines
and Geology recorded the district's overall production at
almost $34 million.8
Bodie
enjoyed a brief but intense revival from 1928 to 1931,
when several highly financed mining companies moved in.
The town was nearly deserted a year later, when fire destroyed
most of downtown. (Courtesy, Gregory Bock)
Bodie
State Historic Park
Comprising the West's
largest, best preserved ghost town, Bodie's surviving
structures were taken over in 1962 by California's Department
of Parks and Recreation and preserved in a "state of arrested
decay." Now Bodie belongs to the ages. Today visitors
walk silent streets and gaze upon vacant buildings as
they contemplate an enduring, though fragile, monument
to the real West that was.
~~~~~~
NOTES:
1 Joseph Wasson, Complete Guide to the Mono
County Mines (San Francisco, CA: Spaulding, Barto
& Co., 1879), x-xi; Daily Bodie Standard 27 October
1879; 29 October 1879; New York Times 29 October
1879; Bodie Chronicle 1 November 1879; 7th and
8th U.S. Census, Dutchess County, NY; Tuolumne County.
"Deed: W.S. Body to Sarah Body." Book A, vol. 5, p. 530,
15 November 1856 (Sonora, CA: Carlo De Ferreri Archives).
One Mono County resident who claimed he had known Body
said his name was William, but records in Poughkeepsie,
New York indicate he was Wakeman S. Body (sometimes spelled "Bodey"), a tinner who
joined the California gold rush, then disappeared after
departing Tuolumne County in 1859 to prospect beyond the
Sierra's eastern slope. Many modern writers claim he was
"Waterman," a name that appeared in an 1879 New York
Times article, probably a reporter's or typesetter's
error.
2Bodie Weekly Standard 11 December 1878.
3Daily Alta California 16 June 1879.
4Daily Bodie Standard 13 February 1879;
Herbert L. Smith, "The Bodie Era: The Chronicles of the
Last Old Time Mining Camp," [1934] TMs (photocopy), 64.
5Daily Free Press 14 July 1880; Daily
Bodie Standard 15 July 1880; Daily Stock Report 5 August 1880; Bridgeport Chronicle-Union 21 August
1880.
6Bodie Evening Miner 27 February 1883.
7Charles W. Chesterman, Rodger H. Chapman,
and Cliffton H. Gray, Jr, Geology and Ore Deposits
of the Bodie Mining District, Mono County, California
(Bulletin 206) (Sacramento, CA: Division of Mines
and Geology, 1986), 32-33.
Beginning
late in 1881, the Bodie Railway & Lumber Company
delivered cordwood and timbers to Bodie's mines and
mills. The railroad never owned any passenger coaches,
and its tracks never reached downtown nor the outside
world. Its only commodity was wood from forests south
of Mono Lake. Trains ran seasonally until the rails,
locomotives, and rolling stock were scrapped in 1917.
(Emil Billeb collection. Courtesy, Vickie Daniels)
Introduced
to this country in 1890, the cyanide process revolutionized
gold and silver production across the West by dissolving
precious metals out of crushed rock, an improvement
over mercury amalgamation employed by Bodie's stamp
mills. Cyanide vats are shown under construction near
the Standard mill in 1898. (Practical Notes on
the Cyanide Process.Courtesy, Engineering and
Mining Journal)
Despite
improved technology, Bodie's wealthiest company, the
Standard, survived only until 1913. Main Street is
seen ghostly and nearly deserted in 1927. (Burton
Frasher photograph. Courtesy, Bancroft Library, University
of California, Berkeley)
