Bodie

The town is named for a man who never saw it, and it does not spell his name correctly either. W. S. Bodey found gold in these hills in 1859 and died that November in a blizzard on a supply run to Monoville; his body was recovered the following spring. The camp stayed small until a mine collapse in the mid-1870s exposed rich ore beneath it, and the rush that followed threw up some two thousand buildings. The spelling is said to have come from a signpainter.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bodie State Historic Park — 0.4 mi
  A gold town of ten thousand left exactly as it emptied, held in arrested decay at 8,375 feet.
• Mono Lake — 14 mi
  A saline lake older than most of the Sierra, with tufa towers and a water fight it eventually won.

More markers nearby

• Dog Town — 10 mi
• Trail of the John C. Frémont 1844 Expedition — 21 mi
• Carson and Colorado R.R. Freight Depot — 30 mi
• Hawthorne — 30 mi