Bodie--a town with few right angles

This is a photo from Bodie, CA, one of the best-preserved ghost towns in the West. That may be because it was a living town until the 1930's, when an accidentally set fire (don't play with matches!!) burned nearly 95% of the buildings, and it was preserved after that by a family until the state park system purchased it in the 1960's. The town is kept in what the rangers call "a state of arrested decay". They try to keep the town just the way it was when the state parks inherited it. Some buildings are propped up a bit, some of the firewood looks freshly chopped, the meeting hall is a museum and the houses with intact curtains are used as ranger residences, but other than that it is as it was found.

Bodie looks like people were sucked away by an alien spaceship, leaving clothes on pegs, dishes on the table, suitcases open at the hotels...the reason is that all the roads into or out of town were toll roads. It cost much less to walk out with as little as you needed, or ride a horse out, than to take a wagon or two of your belongings. It even cost less to replace all those belongings wherever you ended up than to pay the tolls to haul them out. That's why so much was left behind.

Bodie was one of the sites where we spent a day to sketch. Because of the streets, hills, rocks and ruins about, it's a fantastic place to practice perspective drawing. On the other hand, if you try to draw things exactly as they are (which we're supposed to be practicing) the buildings look cockeyed, because so few walls, doors, and roofs are at proper right angles anymore. I chose to sketch one of the few buildings that was still pretty straight, from the front, so that i could tell if it was me or the building that was off. :-)

You can find out more about Bodie from this organization or from the state park website. The park is open all year round but the road is not plowed in the winter.