Inside 13 American Ghost Towns And The Eerie Stories Behind Them

Published June 30, 2024
Updated December 10, 2024

Bodie, The Well-Preserved Ghost Town In The Sierra Nevadas

Bodie Ghost Town

David Broad/Wikimedia CommonsThe Bodie ghost town is tucked in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California.

Like Goldfield, the Bodie ghost town in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains was built around a gold mine. And like Goldfield, Bodie went bust.

Gold was found in the area by William S. Body (sometimes spelled Bodey) in 1859, and subsequent discoveries of gold in the 1870s quickly drew eager prospectors and their families. Though Bodie started with a population of just 20 miners, the official Bodie website reports that its population grew to 10,000 by 1880.

Catering to miners with money to spend, Bodie soon had dozens of saloons — perhaps as many as 65 — as well as brothels and gambling halls. The heavy drinking and the greed that ran through Bodie’s population like a vein of gold meant that the townspeople often lived short, violent lives. Residents were known to ask each other: “Have we a man for breakfast?” which meant: “Did anyone get killed last night?”

Bodie Interior

Public DomainBodie is kept in a state of “arrested decay” today, meaning that some of its interiors still contain items left behind by its residents.

But Bodie’s boom times were short-lived. Its population started to decline in the 1880s, and mining ended for good in the 1940s. Meanwhile, the town also suffered from two large fires. In 1892 and 1932, these blazes consumed many of the 2,000 buildings that remained.

In 1962, Bodie was declared a National Historic Site and a State Historic Park. And today, parts of it remain stunningly frozen in time.

A number of the structures have been preserved in a state of “arrested decay” — meaning that park officials are making no effort to restore them — so visitors can see how the town looked in the 19th century. In fact, some structures in the Bodie ghost town even still have goods stocked on their shelves.

author
Kaleena Fraga
author
A senior staff writer for All That's Interesting since 2021 and co-host of the History Uncovered Podcast, Kaleena Fraga graduated with a dual degree in American History and French Language and Literature from Oberlin College. She previously ran the presidential history blog History First, and has had work published in The Washington Post, Gastro Obscura, and elsewhere. She has published more than 1,200 pieces on topics including history and archaeology. She is based in Brooklyn, New York.
editor
Cara Johnson
editor
A writer and editor based in Charleston, South Carolina and an editor at All That's Interesting since 2022, Cara Johnson holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Washington & Lee University and an M.A. in English from College of Charleston. She has worked for various publications ranging from wedding magazines to Shakespearean literary journals in her nine-year career, including work with Arbordale Publishing and Gulfstream Communications.
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Fraga, Kaleena. "Inside 13 American Ghost Towns And The Eerie Stories Behind Them." AllThatsInteresting.com, June 30, 2024, https://allthatsinteresting.com/ghost-towns. Accessed August 2, 2025.