During our whirlwind road trip around California, David Pahmp and I were set on visiting at least one ghost town. We arrived at Bodie too late the first day, just as the place was closing. We came back the next morning and had several hours to walk around properly. That was the right way to see it.

Bodie began after gold was discovered in 1859, and by the boom years around 1877–1881 it had grown into one of California’s roughest mining towns, with thousands of residents, saloons, gambling halls, a red-light district, churches, a newspaper, and all the usual stuff a place making serious money would want and need.

People did not abandon Bodie all at once. They left because mining became less profitable, fires destroyed large parts of the town, and by 1942, wartime restrictions shut down gold mining altogether. Today, about 110 buildings are still standing, preserved in what is officially called “arrested decay.”

Not to have at least a few spreads from this beautiful place in the book Abandoned – The Beauty in What Remains would almost be blasphemous.