The first time Dennis Ariza visited the ghost town of Bodie in the Eastern Sierras, he got the impression the residents had been abducted by aliens.
“I learned that when the gold mine closed families would pack up their personal belongings, clothing, family Bible, pictures and move to the next town with an active gold mine,” he writes in his recently published photo essay book, “Bodie: A Ghost Town.” “They would take only what they could carry. Children would leave classrooms with their books open, unfinished assignments, and half-eaten apples on their desks. Families would leave furniture, bedding, pots on the stove with food and dishes on the table with unfinished dinners.”
As he explained, “The gold mine closed and they would have to move to the next town where there was an active gold mine and find a house that was abandoned. And this went on from town to town. Just like these people had left dishes and chairs and furniture, they would have to find a house that was available like that in the next town.”
The self-published book is filled with striking photos of the fascinating town accompanied by a brief history as well as descriptions of the photos.
Ariza released the book earlier this month when he was the featured artist in his show, “Holding it Together,” at the Fairfield-Suisun City Visual Arts Association (FSVAA) gallery at the Solano Town Center. Ariza is president of the association and director of the gallery.
Bodie, which sits at an elevation of 8,379 feet about 75 miles southeast of Lake Tahoe, became a boomtown in 1876 with the discovery of a profitable line of gold but had become a ghost town by 1915.
The Friends of Bodie, the surviving residents in the area, managed to “hold it together.” They created the Bodie Foundation in 2008 to help preserve Bodie State Historic Park, which was established in 1962.
The State decided to not restore the buildings but to maintain their ages, appearance, and the conditions they would have been in 1880.
“Occasionally they will put up a brace to keep the building from falling over,” explained Ariza. “They let the building collapse and then they rebuild it to its original (state). It became a state park because people were going out there and stealing equipment, materials, taking souvenirs.”
But along with that came one of the curses of Bodie, at least for those who believe in such things.
“Today the Curse of Bodie continues,” Ariza writes in his book. “People that remove items from Bodie will have bad luck. Packages are always arriving at the Rangers Station with items that had been removed. Each package also contains a letter of apology stating how sorry they were that they took the item and hope that by returning it the curse will leave them alone.”
The idea of the curse of Bodie originated during boom times.
“The last gold mine in Bodie (The Lucky Boy) closed for the last time in the late 1940s,” Ariza writes. “When the town closed, there were still six residents. All but one perished under strange circumstances. A husband shot and killed his wife. Then three men killed the husband. The three men were said to have been haunted by the ghost of the husband shaking his fist and saying he would get even. Later the three men each died mysteriously.”
At its peak, Bodie had a population of over 10,000 and was the first town in California to have electricity. On the first weekend of August each year, the town springs back to life when the Friends of Bodie celebrate its history with the Bodie Days fundraiser by opening the gold mine and some of its buildings for tours.
Ariza first got interested in Bodie in May 2009 when his friend and co-worker Steve Ray took him there on a tour of the Eastern Sierras.
“I had never been there,” recalled Ariza. “One of our first stops was an old gold mine outside of Bridgeport, and then we went from there to the gold mine in Masonic, and then we ended up in Bodie. We probably spent six or seven hours there just walking around and looking at the buildings and photographing stuff. The equipment interested me and the history. So in August, I went back wife my wife to Bodie Days. Every May I go back and I try to go back every few years to Bodie Days.”
He published the book in part for those who may never get the chance to visit the ghost town.
“I talked to a lot of people and a lot of photographers and they all said, ‘Oh, I want to go there, I’d love to see that someday,'” said Ariza. “I said, ‘I’m going to put this together and create a small photo journey to show people what is actually there, people who will never make it out there.'”
The stories and folklore in the book come in part from conversations with the locals during Bodie Days as well as with the park rangers.
“The rangers live out there and the snow gets up to 15 feet deep in the wintertime,” said Ariza. “and they use snowcats (enclosed-cab, truck-sized, fully tracked vehicles) to go from highway 395 out to Bodie (about 17 miles) because that’s the only way of transportation. Sometimes they only come out once a month. They get all the supplies they need and then they rotate. One will go home to his or her family and then another one will come out and stay for a month.”
There is even some mystery around the name of the town. Bodie was named after William (a.k.a. Waterman) S. Body, who discovered gold in what is now known as the Bodie Bluffs. One story, Ariza related, is “They asked someone to make a sign that said ‘Welcome to Body’ and the guy spelled Body wrong and the mayor or the people how hired him said, ‘Okay we will just use it.'” Another version is that a group of local citizens changed the spelling so that it would be pronounced correctly.
To learn more about the town and enjoy Ariza’s stunning photos, you can purchase the book at the Town Center gallery store, currently open Thursday– Sunday, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. Alternatively, you can purchase the book or individual prints at dennisarizaphotography.com/bodie-series.
