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Angelika Currently, a campaign is sweeping across the country with the goal of attracting more tourists to America. American celebrities are promoting the beauty of the United States and hope to halt the decline in tourism following the terrorist attacks and to stimulate the sluggish economy. Traveling and shopping are now considered patriotic behaviors here in the USA! However, we are not driven by patriotic motives to explore the world -- our goal is to discover as much of California as possible while we live here. During one of our short trips in California, we visited the former gold mining town of "Bodie" recently -- a so-called ghost town.
Bodie is located in the middle of the Californian outback, close to the Nevada border and about 100 miles northeast of Yosemite National Park. As our somewhat aging car struggled over mountain passes and the last three miles of unpaved road, we kept asking ourselves what had motivated people back in the day to pitch their tents in this rugged terrain. Naturally, it was the lure of gold. But the winters in this region are extremely harsh (yes, that exists in California too). Even today, the towns are cut off from the rest of the world for months because the passes over the Sierra Nevada mountain range are impassable. In 1859, gold was discovered in a town called Bodie. At the height of the gold rush, around 1879, about 10,000 people lived in Bodie. It had, among other things, 65 saloons. After the gold mines were exhausted, the residents gradually left Bodie, taking what they could carry but also leaving a lot behind. Due to its isolated location, much has remained as the residents had left it: in some cases, the dishes are still in the cupboards. Although only about five percent of the buildings still stand today, it took us hours to see everything. The buildings are not restored, but only minimally maintained, for example, they're supported if they are in danger of collapsing. Western movie enthusiasts or die-hard fans of the TV series "Little House on the Prairie" will be in seventh heaven in Bodie. I wouldn't have been surprised to run into Laura Ingalls. If you're in the area, check out Bodie.
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