The Bad Man From Bodie
One journalist's creation forever taints a gold mining boomtown.
By: Michael Piatt 08/01/2007
Bodie is a ghost town—perhaps the West’s best preserved ghost town, where abandoned weather-beaten buildings stand stoically against encroaching sagebrush.
But years ago, the remote mining camp east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California became the object of a gold rush that gave rise to one of the West’s wildest boomtowns. Saloon brawls, stagecoach robberies, vigilante justice and gunfights earned Bodie a reputation for violence that rivaled Tombstone, Deadwood and Dodge City. Those boomtowns are famous today, recognized largely for celebrated gunmen who stalked their streets, such as Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and Wild Bill Hickok. Yet Bodie’s killers, depraved or otherwise, were soon forgotten.
Still, Bodie’s penchant for trouble gave rise to one legendary figure. Though his fame was short-lived, the “Bad Man From Bodie” was a name recognized across the country. Evoking peril, “bad man” was a popular 19th-century expression that meant “ruffian,” “tough guy” or “cold-blooded murderer.”
Did the “Bad Man From Bodie” really exist? Or does he just stand exemplar for the shady characters who drifted through the dangerous boomtown?
Gambling on Bodie
After prospector W.S. Bodey and his companions discovered gold in 1859, Bodie remained nearly unpopulated until a cave-in exposed an ore body that inspired San Francisco speculators to set up industrial-scale mining. Their gamble paid off in late 1877, when the mine produced $784,523 in gold and silver bullion, and investors received four consecutive monthly dividends. The company’s good luck infected the nation’s investing community with gold fever and aroused fortune hunters who headed for Bodie. As the population swelled past 1,000 restless souls, the mining outpost’s startup newspaper summarized the situation.
Gold—But a few short months ago Bodie was an insignificant little place, now she is rapidly growing in size and importance and people are crowding in upon her from far and near, and why? Because of the rich discoveries of gold—yellow, glittering, precious gold.
Except for a few minor altercations, Bodie remained peaceful during the early months of the excitement. But on January 15, 1878, gunfire pierced the wintry air. In the initial moments of the exchange, James Blair, age 28, received a bullet in the left arm near the shoulder, but he continued firing until John Bresnan, age 30, lay dead. A week later, doctors administered chloroform and operated on Blair’s arm. They removed the shattered upper portion of his humerus bone, but the patient died 26 days after the street fight. Some 20 miles away, at the county courthouse in Bridgeport, the recorder wrote the names Bresnan and Blair on a clean page in the spanking new Mono County Register of Deaths, an impressive leather-bound volume adorned with gold lettering. The official record of violence at Bodie had begun.
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