The "wickedest town in the West"

BODIE, Calif. — Goodby God, I'm going to Bodie. --From 1881 diary of little girl moving with her parents to the"wickedest town in the West."

Howling winds bellowed down the mountain into town, flapping shingles on weathered homes and stores, tugging at walls and windows with fierce force, hurling dust through empty streets.

Nobody was home. Nobody but a park ranger is ever home in Bodie, abandoned since the 1930s.

Above the town, on Bodie Bluff, the wind had a different sound, a gusty sonorous whine mixed with the unceasing hum of three drilling rigs.

It is the discordant noise from the drilling rigs and the sight of mining equipment and trucks on the hill hovering over Old Bodie that has many people upset.

Ironically, fears are being voiced that this remote Mono County ghost town may be damaged or devastated by the very thing that created it--gold mining--and by the very family that fought to save it for posterity. Click on the heading above for more.