Bodie, California, is a ghost town located some distance beyond Mono Lake in the northern reaches of the state. As the final miles of the road to Bodie are unpaved, the difficulty of getting there — in a vehicle not built for such conditions, at least — can hardly be overstated.

As you might expect, Bodie’s history is inextricably linked — indeed begins and ends — with gold. Bodie, whose population at the height of the Gold Rush was no less than ten thousand strong, had a reputation of being the wildest place in all of the Wild West: bordellos, its own Chinatown cum opium dens, and perpetual gunfights along the streets.  The saloons alone numbered more than sixty.

Once it was no longer inhabited, Bodie twice suffered the ravages of fire.  Only a small remnant of its prior structural glory remains to be seen today, but that is still more than you’ll find in any comparable place in California: some fifty buildings, preserved by the government of California in a state of “arrested decay,” as they themselves describe it. No one has tried to introduce modern art here, as was done in Rhyolite, nor — worse yet — to turn the whole place into the utter shambles that Calico, yet another California ghost town, has become.

Entry to most structures is prohibited, but good views can be had through the windows.  Living conditions are largely preserved as in a time capsule: peeling wallpaper, mildewed furniture, faded photographs on the walls. Cans of grocery store provisions lie buried along pantry shelves under a thick layer of dust; an organ gradually disintegrates inside the church; nearby, an ancient Chevrolet has rusted permanently into the ground. Well, if you are looking for an eerie experience, Bodie does not disappoint.

The municipal cemetery lies off in the distance, where a stone angel presides over the grave of three-year-old miss Evelyn. Her ghost, people say, can occasionally be heard giggling gently as it frolics among the graves.