Bodie's gold : tall tales and true history from a California mining town / Marguerite Sprague.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sprague, Marguerite, 1958-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Folklore.

Interviews.

Ghost towns.

Mining camps.

History.

Gold miners.

Frontier and pioneer life.

Bodie (Calif.)--Gold discoveries.

Bodie (Calif.).

Bodie (Calif.)--History.

Frontier and pioneer life--California--Bodie.

Gold miners--California--Bodie--History.

Mining camps--California--History.

Ghost towns--California.

Bodie (Calif.)--Biography.

Interviews--California.

Folklore--California--Bodie.

California--Bodie.

California.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xiv, 248 pages : illustrations, map ; 27 cm

Place of Publication:

Reno : University of Nevada Press, [2003]

Summary:

The silent streets and uninhabited buildings that greet today's visitors to Bodie, California's quintessential ghost town, belie the town's colorful past and the full and varied lives of its former residents. In Bodie's Gold, author Marguerite Sprague uses a wide range of historic documents and recent interviews with surviving Bodieties to bring this former boomtown back to life. The Bodie Mining District was established in 1860 after the discovery of several small gold deposits in the area. The big boom did not begin until 1878, however, when new discoveries and the arrival of highly capitalized mining companies made possible the exploitation of Bodie's significant mineral wealth. For a time, the town's population grew by ten people a day, the mines extracted several million dollars worth of gold, and Bodie flourished. What grew there was in many ways a collection of contradictions -- an isolated town in the midst of the eastern Sierra high desert, dusty in summer and frigid in winter, but for a time endowed with such urban amenities as first-class restaurants, lavish hotels, and the latest in ladies' fashions. Bodie was both a rough mining camp, which had for a time the highest murder rate in the U.S., and a town where ordinary families lived secure and contented lives and a highly respectable social network supported cultural programs and charitable works.

Sprague's account covers all the details of Bodie life -- the mines and the working conditions of the miners; the demimonde of saloons and brothels; the schools, churches, and other institutions of settled life; the lives of its residents, including the native Kuzedika Indians and the Chinese; the role of women in the economy and in local society; and the experiences of the children. The boom ended in 1880, and the twon began its long, slow decline, surviving into the twentieth century as a small town supported by a few small but steady mines. Mining ended with World War II, and the last permanent residents moved away. What remained of the town was named a California state park in 1964. Enhanced with numerous historic photographs and quotations from newspapers of that period, as well as by the reminiscences of former residents, Bodie's Gold is lively reading, a vivid account of the life that once throbbed behind the now-closed doors and empty streets of California's official Gold Rush ghost town.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Welcome to Bodie 1

Chapter 2 The Gold in Them Thar' Hills 11

Chapter 3 The Lousy Miners 33

Chapter 4 The Golden Time 53

Chapter 5 Bodie's Social Ladder 75

Chapter 6 The Bodie Fever Breaks: 1881 109

Chapter 7 Up Home 131

Chapter 8 Bodie State Historic Park 185

Appendix 1 Once Upon an Ancient Time 193

Appendix 2 De Re Metallica Redux 199

Appendix 3 The First Bodieites: The Kuzedika 205

Appendix 4 When a Bodie Meets a Bodie 215.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-235) and index.

ISBN:

0874175119

OCLC:

50803672