Nov/Dec 2021I have known Laura Burtness since she was a babe-in-arms and was shown off by her mother, Yvonne, at the elementary school where I was a teacher. Yvonne and I team taught for many years, keeping me in touch with Laura. When she was about ten, Laura began packing back issues and books for Benchmark Publications; she often said she learned her world geography doing this. She continued helping us until she entered Stanford University to earn her teaching credential.
After marrying the love of her life, Dudley, she began camping and hiking in the Sierra Nevadas. This July, the two of them camped around Bridgeport, California, and I suggested they visit nearby Bodie.
They did, and Laura posted such a nice description of her visit I asked if I could run it along with her photos. Seems to fit in with Neil Pfafman’s excellent series of Bodie plans and shows what Bodie is like today.
-Bob Brown
My husband Dudley, and I, both teachers, spend some of our vacation time each year camping. We are Western Sierra devotees, but this year we spent a week in California’s Eastern Sierra, camping and hiking at 7000+ feet. It was a new location for us, and what a stunning area.
On our last day we took a hiking break, and on Bob Brown’s suggestion, headed to Bodie State Historic Park, a bonified ghost town some 30 miles outside of Bridgeport, California.
We pulled up and paid the $11.00 fee that included an informative brochure. Clouds were gathering and there was a threat of rain. As we walked the streets of Bodie we peered into the schoolhouse that once had some 600 pupils. The desks were still there, and the teacher’s chalk work was still on the blackboard. We walked among the graves in the cemetery where the tombstones looked like little lozenges in the dirt. We heard thunder above us, and read that President Herbert Hoover’s brother and family lived in Bodie for a time. I read aloud about a murder that happened in broad daylight, and how vigilantes broke into the jail, kidnapped the accused, and meted out their own justice by hanging him. As it started to sprinkle, we read that Bodie had a large Chinatown and how the Chinese were discriminated against by not being allowed to join the Miner’s Union, and how the town impacted the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the native Paiutes. The two hours spent in Bodie meandering through history went by quickly, and as the rain and wind picked up, we hopped back into our VisionQuest van and headed home.
Bodie Today
