Settled by prospectors lured by the California Gold Rush in the mid-1800s, Bodie became a booming mining town of fortune-hungry men, saloon shootouts and barroom brawls. Its fortune was short-lived however. By the 1890s gold strikes elsewhere had drawn the crowds away, causing the population to dwindle. Frozen in time, this ghost town became a National Historical Landmark in the 1960s. Now, tourists, not miners, flock here to walk the deserted streets and admire the town’s arrested decline.
