11/8/05

part from drag racing, California doesn’t have as many years of history as most of these United States, having come late to the party.  (Hey, it took time to steal all that real estate from Mexico!)  What relatively brief history the wild, wild West has had since joining your little union sure is juicy, though:  cowboys ’n’ Indians; gunslingers vs. good guys; earthquakes; forest fires; gold fever — and the lawless mining towns that followed. 

The Gold Rush that began in 1849 gave rise to more than 550 boom towns in my general neighborhood, which winds through the western Sierra foothills of northern California.  Alas, only about 50 survived after the shiny stuff ran out. 

History teaches that the same process was occurring on the opposite slope of these mountains, if slightly later.  As the gold started thinning out over here, some industrious miners made their way over the nearly-9000-foot Sierra summits to try their luck on the other side.  Many wound up working the mine in what is now known as the Bodie ghost town.  Founded after an 1859 gold strike, Bodie subsequently boomed to a population of nearly 10,000 people and 2000 buildings before gradually emptying, in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  After sputtering for years, the Bodie mine coughed up the last of some 100 million dollars’ worth of gold in 1941.