Bodie State Park: California State Park System

The brochure for Bodie State Park is very interesting.  It provides information for a walking tour, but that information tells some rather significant history.  Of course it doesn’t have all the history as only 5 percent of the original structures remain.  Many are lost due to fire and time.

fire station

The first home indicates the occupants Frank and Donald McDonnell were miners.  However Donald’s wife was also a post mistress.  A later occupant, Alice Dolan was a school teacher.  Her father had been a sheriff who had been killed in a shootout near Mono Lake. 

There is only one church remaining, Methodist Church.  It was built in 1882.  A catholic Church built at the same time was burned in 1928. 

David Victor Cain sold Bodie to the California State Park system in 1962.  His wife was a school teacher.  His father was James S. Cain who was in the lumber business, and for a time had barges and a steamship on Mono Lake to transport wood.  James Cain married Martha Delilah Wells just before coming to Bodie in 1879.  He acquired the Standard Company through court action and was the principal owner in town.  He also

Tom Miller worker for a rail service, Bodie Railway and Lumber Company which ran from a Lumber Mill by Mono Lake to Bodie.  He was a teamster so perhaps it was a horse drawn railway.  Jeffrey pine from Mono Mills was used for mine timbers and to fuel boilers.  Emil Billeb was the last superintendent of the rail company which ran until 1917. 

Harvey Boone ran a large stable complex with a saddle room.  He also ran a general store with partner James W. Wright.

There are two mortuaries remaining in Bodie.  You can still see caskets in one of these. 

The Miners Union Hall was an important building.  In addition to union meets, religious services and social gatherings were held here, including Independence Day and Christmas parties, masquerade parties, and school recitals. 

The I.O.O.F (Independent Order of Odd Fellows Lodge No. 279) hosted a fraternal order.  The order used the upstairs while down stairs was for a furniture business, and later Bodie Athletic Club.  There was also a Masonic Lodge in town from 1878 to 1918. 

Thomas Treloar was murdered in Bodie in 1881.  Joseph DeRoche, who was romantically involved with Treloar’s wife shot him as he left a dance at the Miners Union Hall.  DeRoche was arrested, but escaped capture after a few hours.  A posse recaptured him two days later and he was brought back to Bodie for trial.  However a vigilante committee (“601”) took him from his jail cell and hung him.  This resulted in a demotion for town Constable John Kirgan.

At one time there was a casino in Bodie owned by Horace F. Swasey.

Eli Johl took up painting.  Her husband was a prominent miner and he was fairly successful, being able to purchase homes and saloons. 

Sam Leon’s Bar had a barbershop attached run by Joe Hayner, the last barber in Bodie. 

The fire house has a bell tower.  It was rebuilt in the 1930s by the California Conservation Corps.  Many fires were battled over the years, the biggest being July 25, 1892 and June 23, 1932.  The 1892 fire consumed 60 buildings and started in a restaurant on Main Street.  Efforts to fight the fire were delayed due to a valve closure.  The 1932 fire was also difficulty to fight as a screen at the reservoir worked poorly and pipes became clogged.  It is said that the 1932 fire destroyed about 90 percent of the town.  There are 100 buildings remaining so this would be a loss of 900 buildings.  This fire was blamed on a toddler who liked to play with fire.  It started at the Sawdust Corner Saloon at the corner of Main Street and Union.  The Occidental and U. S. Motels were destroyed as was most of the center of town.

1931

after fire

today

The Wheaton an Luhrs building was a store built in the 1880s.  It through the years also housed a land office and a hydroelectric company that transmitted electricity from Lundy Canyon.  Josie Pearl worked as a cook here for a boarding house.  She also mined on the side. 

The Bon Ron Lodging House became a school after the original school burned down.  Its highest enrollment was 1879 with 615 students.  It closed in 1942.

Bodie had a baseball team in the early 1900s and Dan McMillan, who had only one arm, was the manager. 

Boarding housings were common to house single men who worked in the mines. 

Canadian Roderick McInnis was a miner but known for his wrestling talents. 

Several people served the community as doctor, among them Dr. John A Street.  Doctors were kept busy with accident victims, smallpox, choler and pneumonia. 

The Standard Mill was the most successful of the 30 mining companies in Bodie.  They extracted $18 million in gold over 38 years.  Gold was extracted by different techniques over the years including crushing with heavy iron bars,  Mercury and later cyanide were also used int the extraction process.   The Standard Mine area is also known as Bunker Hill and Bullion Mine.  The original Mill was destroyed by fire in 1898 and rebuilt in 1899.  Electricity was brought to the mill in 1893 from a hydroelectric plant 13 miles away.  This was one of the first long distance transmissions of electricity.  Theodore Hoover, brother of Herbert Hoover was mine superintendent for a time.

It is bragged that main street Bodie as a full mile of one- and two-story buildings at one time, before the fires.  It has residents from many different parts of the world, including Italy, Ireland, Germany, France, Canada, Mexico.  There was a large African American community and a large Chinese community.  1880 census shows 253 Chinese residents (Chinese population may have been greater).  Only two buildings remain of the significant Chinatown.  The Chinatown included Taoist Temple and opium dens.  The Chinese were not allowed to join the Miner’s Union which limited their economic possibilities.  They mostly made money by operating laundries and selling vegetables and firewood.  There were also 35 native Paiutes in the 1880 census.  There life was disrupted by the mines, however some worked in the mines.  The hunter-gatherer lifestyle was impacted. 

The Bodie Bank was never robbed.  However a night time burglary yielded $2,000 cash and some bullion.  Only the vault remained after the 1932 fire. 

Bodie had its red-light district known as Bonanza Street, Maiden Lane or Virgin Alley.  This was mostly a row of one-room cribs where ladies lived and worked. 

Attorney Patrick Reddy served as the miner’s lawyer.  He had only one arm.  He maintained offices in both San Francisco and Bodie. 

Winters could be cold in Bodie with temperatures 30 or 40 below zero and severe winds.  Lots of wood was needed to heat the poorly insulated homes.  The winter of 1878-79 was especially severe with some new arrivals who were not prepared dying from exposure. 

Infrequent mining accidents resulted in loss of life and injury.  Dan McDonal was injured in an explosion.  Michael J. Cody died in a mining accident near Bridgeport. 

Ice was cut from local ponds and stored at the Tom Miller’s Ice House where it was available during the summer.  Sawdust was used to insulate the ice.

Hydraulic Mining and the California Gold Rush

Water cannon

Hydraulic mining was a practice which worked for extracting gold.  However it was not very healthy for the environment.  The water cannon would not only force the gravel and dirt into a sluice, where the gold was separated, it also destroyed the undergrowth and the hillsides.  The practice was halted by the federal government in 1885.

This pictures shows the result on the hillside.

This is a rest area on the I-80.

Book Review: Life During the Gold Rush

Life During the Gold Rush: The Way People Live, Victoria Sherrow, Lucent Books, San Diego, CA 1998.

 

This book gives a good description of the California gold rush.  It starts with the “forty-eighters” who arrived at the mines earlier than the rest.  The author does not do a good job describing the Mormon involvement.  She mostly said the Mormons in California left Utah and Brigham Young to come and look for gold; while in fact, the Mormons who were in California were here for other reasons, having immigrated with Sam Brannan, or been members of the Mormon Battalion, or having come on other overland journeys to California.  The opposite was mostly true.  The majority of the Mormons left California after mining that first year, and relocated to Utah and with the Mormons. 

The author describes the sea route, and the land route.  She then does an adequate job of describing camp life.  She also talks about treatment of minority minors—including those coming from other countries, as well as the treatment of Native Americans.  In both this areas, the people in California were less than honorable.  Thinking only of themselves the murdered many native Americans, often with government support and encouragement.  Also they were able to have enacted a foreign worker tax of $20 a month.  It did not matter that the Californios were here before the Americans.  They too were considered outsiders.

The author describes the growth of San Francisco; again without mentioning the Mormons, Sam Brannan or the members of the Ship Brooklyn company who had a significant role in 1846.  What is impressive is the rapid growth which came to California as a result of the rush.  The population growth was 400 percent in 10 years, and caused some significant growing pains.

Book Review: Gold, Gold from the American river, Don Brown Roaring Book Press 2011

This is an interesting read, and presents some startling statistics I had never seen before.  Of those traveling to California over the California trail perhaps as many as 4000 people died on the trip.  This is understandable, as it was a very hard road.  Also many people traveled this route; in 1849 alone over 20,000.  Most died from disease, especially cholera. 

The fact that is even more remarkable is the number of the gold miners who also died.  “One of every five forty-niners died from disease or accident the first six months of arriving in California.”  That is a significant statistic.

The story starts with the journey to California, around South America, over the Isthmus of Panama, or the California Trail.  It talks of some of the hardships with these options, but the goal was to arrive at Sacramento. 

Although most of the miners were Yankees, not all.  A quarter were mixed ethnic backgrounds, mostly Chinese.  Those of other ethnic groups were not treated well.  Eventually a miner’s tax was imposed on foreigners, and many returned home.

Native Americans were treated even more poorly.  They were expelled by mining communities, and often succumbed to new diseases brought by the miners.  Many towns offered a bounty for them, so many were murdered. 

Only a few people made a fortune in the gold mines.  By 1852 most of the mining was done by large companies with large machines, which ended to gold rush.  Even so 300,000 people arrived in California during this period.  Those who did become wealthy, mostly did so in merchandising rather than in mining. 

 

Mormon Station aka Reese's Station: Nevada's First Permanent Settlement

Mormon Station was established in 1851.  It was a response by a couple of Mormon entrepeuners to the need for a station on the California Trail, for outfits to recruit before going over the Sierra Nevada.  The Nevada State Park website describes the history:
In June of 1850, two members of the Mormon Battalion, Abner Blackburn and Hampton Beatie, established a temporary trading post on the west side of Carson Valley. Their stories of this beautiful area on the emigrant trail intrigued their Salt Lake employer, John Reese, and his nephew, Stephen Kinsey.
In the spring of 1851, Reese and Kinsey loaded more than a dozen wagons full of supplies and set out for the Carson Valley. The Reese Company built a permanent trading post, approximately one mile south of the temporary trading post established by Blackburn and Beatie. Reese’s Station soon had a blacksmith shop, livery stable, and flour and saw mills nearby.
http://parks.nv.gov/parks/mormon-station-state-historic-park/
The Genoa City history adds some clarification:

Explorers and trappers made their way through this area but it wasn't until June of 1851 when John Reese and his party built a trading post that the area began to attract settlers and became a permanent settlement. Reese and his men took up land claims extending from the Walley's Hot Springs marsh area south of Genoa into Jack's Valley on the north. Since most of the men in Reese's party were Mormon, the location became known as Mormon Station. After building a trading post, Reese built a house and sent for his family in New York. Later, Reese added a blacksmith shop and a large corral for livestock.

The Overland Emigrant Trail passed down what is now Genoa's Main Street. Reese's operation did very well and when the Mormons were called back to Salt Lake City in 1857, Reese decided to stay to protect his business and extensive land claims. A great deal of buying, trading and selling of land went on during these early years. Reese did return to Salt Lake City in 1859 after business reversals.

Orson Hyde, an elder in the Mormon Church, was sent to "Mormon Station", Utah Territory, to set up a government, survey the town into lots, and define the state line between California and Utah Territory. He renamed Mormon Station "Genoa" in 1855. As the story goes, Hyde admired Christopher Columbus and so named the town site" Genoa" after Columbus's birth place, Genoa, Italy. Orson Hyde was the first probate Judge. Court matters were settled by Judge Hyde in the loft of Reese's trading post. Entrance to the loft was gained by climbing a ladder on the outside of the building then climbing through a large window into the loft. This loft was also used as a type of hotel for those pioneers traveling by foot and wishing to stay the night.

http://www.genoanevada.org/history.htm
There is some argument as to whether this is the first settlement, as the town of Dayton also lays a claim.  Turns out there were miners living in Dayton, before Reese established Mormon Station.  However they had not built permanent buildings. 

Book Review: California Gold Rush: Search for Treasure

This is a children's book written by Catherine E. Chambers and published by Troll Associates, 1984.  I have this book from when I was a history consultant.  This book is very good on describing the discovery of gold at the while making a channel for water to run a mill wheel.  The story in the book tells of the wealth of John Sutter.  It downplays the role of the workers in the discovery of gold, and focuses on John Marshall, the foreman.  Many of the workers were from the Mormon Batallion, which is not mentioned in the book. 

One thing it does do well is talk of how John Sutter hoped to keep the discovery of gold a secret.  He knew it would be hard to employ people in his workings, if they were all chasing gold.  Sam Brannon, a recent Mormon emigrant spoiled this as it was he who brought news to San Francisco, "There is gold on the American River."  He also put a notice in his paper and sent this East, which sparked the rush. 

California's economy was based on the gold mine.  It was only later that the gold of the soil was discovered, which became the backbone of California's economy.