Bodie

The Bounty of Bodie

"I'll Tell ya friend, it wasn't as easy as the fourteen miles of bad road to Bodie."

Description

Bodie (/ˈboʊdiː/ BOH-dee) is a ghost town in the Bodie Hills east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, United States. It is about 75 miles (121 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe, and 12 mi (19 km) east-southeast of Bridgeport, at an elevation of 8,379 feet (2554 m). Bodie became a boom town in 1876 after the discovery of a profitable line of gold; by 1879 it had a population of 7,000–10,000.

The town went into decline in the subsequent decades and came to be described as a ghost town by 1915. The U.S. Department of the Interior recognizes the designated Bodie Historic District as a National Historic Landmark.

Also registered as a California Historical Landmark, the ghost town officially was established as Bodie State Historic Park in 1962. It receives about 200,000 visitors yearly.

Bodie State Historic Park is partly supported by the Bodie Foundation.

Game Time Period

Game could start in 1876 as the PCs hear of the rich strike in Bodie. It would last till around 1900.

Why Bodie?

When I was young my mother and brother and I took vacations to Sequoia, King's Canyons, and Yosemite parks. We also visited relatives in South Dakota. On one of the trips, somewhere around 1971 or 1972, we stayed in Yosemite then went out east and up to South Dakota. On that trip for unknown reasons mom took us off the beaten path down 14 miles of road a VW bug should never have traveled. That put us in Bodie, California at around 9am. We spent the day there wandering around the ghost town, talking to another visitor who was quite familiar with the place. He had had family that had been born and raised and apparently lived their whole life in this fading place. I suspect he had ulterior motives for talking to my brother and I, that being the semi-hippie mother. He had no luck as we left and never saw him again but for that day we got a history lesson of this once thriving boom town.

Sources

Wikipedia page for Bodie [[1]]

California State Parks page [[2]]

Bodie's Website [[3]]

Bodie Foundation [[4]]

Madame Mustache. A gambler and brothel owner [[5]]

Rosa May. Prostitute [[6]]

Race track [[7]]

601 Vigilante group [[8]]

Ella May Cain. School teacher, author. native of Bodie. [[9]]

Discovery of the Standard Mine [[10]]

bad men of bodie [[11]]

Gallery. Stories about particular buildings. [[12]]

Timeline

• Bodie Game Timeline
• Bodie Timeline page[[13]]

Maps

Google Earth [[14]] Tourism is encouraged.

Some images are Courtesy of California State Parks, 2019.

• Main Street Map. Map is large.
• 

This map has the intersections of Mill & Green across Main Street. There are a couple other side streets. Good place for the action to take place.

Venues

Businesses [[15]]

• Dechambeau Hotel & the IOOF hall: A main hotel with a fine saloon and dining room. International Odd Order of Od A lot of possibilities for game play. Odd Fellows Hall was used in many ways.
• McMilan House
• Gregory House
• Conway House
• Burkham House
• Schoolhouse, Original and Bon Ton Lodging House. Original one was a small one that was burned down in 1879 by a disgruntled student. The Bon Ton Lodging house was converted to the large two story school.
  • Seems reasonable the school teachers live upstairs. It might also have lodgings for rent that goes to supporting the teachers and school. Nice place for a non-violent PC to live.
• The Standard Mill
• Bodie and Benton Railroad Office
• Bodie Bank*
• Moyle House *
• Moyle Warehouse*
• Hoover House.: Theodore & Mildred Hoover. Theodore was manger of the Standard Mill.
• Gas Station: Maybe have this be new, A source of contention bringing early gas engines into a horse town.
• Stuart Kirkwood Livery Stable*
• Reddy House *
• Boddie Methodist Church*
• Donnley House
• Red Barn
• Dolan House
• L.E.Bell House
• Metzgers House
• Bodie Parking Lot

• Johl House
• Muurphy/McRae House
• Sam Leon's Bar 7 Barber Shop (nice....adventure awaits here! )
• Red Cloud mine(IN town)

Chinatown

Bodie had an active Chinese subculture.

• Activities of the Chinese

• • Wood Hauling from the eastern Sierras to Bodie. Running Mule Trains.
  • Located along King Street, Chinatown offered general stores,laundries, boarding houses, gambling halls, saloons and a
  • Taoist temple.
  • The Chinese also earned income by selling vegetables, making charcoal, and working on the Bodie railway.
• Tong Sing Wo House :
• Tong Sing Wo
• Opium. A big part of the game could surround the opium trade. Fighting over control. Stolen bricks of opium.

People of Bodie

• Patrick Reddy: Patrick Reddy was a Bodie lawyer. Yes, he was the one who defended the “Bad Man from Bodie”. On more than one occasion he kept supposedly guilty men from being hanged. Pat was very well known for his abilities as a lawyer, and was called upon often.
• Silas Smith: [[16]]. Store owner and Main & King. Dry Goods and first Post Office
• H.Z. Osborne: Printed the first “Daily Free Press” newspaper in Bodie. September 6, 1879
• Reverend Hinkle – a Methodist Reverand
• Father Cassin – a Roman Catholic priest.
• Eli Johl and wife Lottie. Eli is a butcher at the Union Market.