Framedlight

By the time we left the church the weather really looked to be on a downturn. Black clouds were rolling in and the temperature was falling. We continued down Railway Avenue to the water towers that were used when the railway came to Lake Valley. A branch line of the Santa Fe Railroad was built to Lake Valley to serve the mines and later to provide goods for the town's merchants. The railway arrived in 1884, but by 1934 its use was so limited that the line was dismantled. We looked beyond the fence to where the line once ran. We could also see where the railroad ran up to mines There was a wooden storage type building by the railroad said to be the coal sorter. The other form of transport was the stage coach that ran between Lake valley and Hillsboro and Kingston, both mining towns to the north, and Nutt to the south. This was a much riskier form of transport, subject to attacks by bandits and the rough unmade roads it had to negotiate. At one time the stagecoach was operated and ru...

We continued our exploration of Bodie walking up towards the Standard Mill. On our way we passed some more houses, a well and a couple of rusty wagons from the old railroad. The rails from this have long gone to scrap. The Standard Mill and Mine stand on the side of a hill known as Bodie Buff. At one time several mines operated in the area round Bodie but all the smaller ones closed leaving just a few larger ones including the Standard Mine, originally known as the Bunker Hill Mine when registered in July 1861. It was sold for $67,000 dollars to four partners who changed the name to the Standard Consolidated Mining Company in 1877. In 25 years this mine produced nearly $15 million dollars worth of gold and caused the Bodie gold rush. Fire destroyed it in 1898 but it was rebuilt . In the years between 1860 and 1941 when this mine finally closed Bodie yielded close to $100 million in gold and silver. The Mill was a stamping mill used to crush the ore. You cannot ...