Tufa at Mono Lake

Jill's Journal: The starkly beautiful Mono Lake, nearly three times saltier than the ocean and 100 times more alkaline than the ocean, is visually distinctive for its unusual tufa towers. More on those in a minute.

Doesn’t this look like an oasis in the desert? From a mountain miles and miles away, the massive Mono Lake doesn’t even fully fit in the camera lens.

And yet, it used to be bigger. Much bigger. Mono Lake has dropped more than 45 vertical feet since 1941. The culprit? The city of Los Angeles diverts water from the streams that feed Mono Lake. The entire area in this picture was once under water, once part of the lake.

Millions of migratory birds use Mono Lake as a pit stop to rest and refuel on their journeys both north and south. It’s been dubbed an “avian gas station.” The shrinking lake was affecting their migration, which in turn impacted food chains and so much more. Something had to be done. So, since 1994, California has been decreasing the diversion of water from the streams around Mono Lake. Eventually the water’s edge will be lapping at this panel. That’s still far lower than it was originally, but it helps.

We took the short, one mile South Tufa Nature Trail to get up close and personal with this unique body of water. It’s too salty for fish to survive, but tiny brine shrimp and alkali flies thrive here. They provide food for the millions of birds which visit.

Mono Lake is best known for its tufa towers, those unusual islands of sorts in and near the water. Tufa is a complicated mineral structure which is formed when fresh water springs bubble up through the alkaline waters. These were all under water at one time, but when the lake level dropped and they were exposed to air, tufa stopped growing.

Tufa is bigger than it looks, as shown by the girls in this photo. It’s not unusual to see tufa more than 30 feet tall here.

Water that settles in Mono Lake never flows to the ocean. With its salt and alkaline makeup, this lake is very similar to the better-known Great Salt Lake in Utah.

Lots of lakes and even oceans sometimes look “sudsy” at the edge, but Mono Lake’s “suds” were especially big and prolific. Does anyone have any idea what the foam is? We’d love to know.

Mark Twain spent some time at Mono Lake in the 1800s (lately it has felt like we’ve been tracing his footsteps). He has some humorous and non-flattering things to say about the lake and the area in his Roughing It:

“Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds. This solemn, silent, sailless sea—this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth—is little graced with the picturesque. It is an unpretending expanse of grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference…

“The lake is two hundred feet deep, and its sluggish waters are so strong with alkali that if you only dip the most hopelessly soiled garment into them once or twice, and wring it out, it will be found as clean as if it had been through the ablest of washerwomen's hands…

“Mono Lake is a hundred and fifty miles in a straight line from the ocean—and between it and the ocean are one or two ranges of mountains —yet thousands of sea-gulls go there every season to lay their eggs and rear their young. One would as soon expect to find sea-gulls in Kansas…

“Half a dozen little mountain brooks flow into Mono Lake, but not a stream of any kind flows out of it. It neither rises nor falls, apparently, and what it does with its surplus water is a dark and bloody mystery.

“There are only two seasons in the region round about Mono Lake—and these are, the breaking up of one winter and the beginning of the next… So uncertain is the climate in summer that a lady who goes out visiting cannot hope to be prepared for all emergencies unless she takes her fan under one arm and her snow shoes under the other…”

“Goodbye God, I’m Going to Bodie.”

Jill's Journal:
“And now my comrades all are gone;
Naught remains to toast.
They have left me here in my misery,
Like some poor wandering ghost.”
--Unknown

We know we are blessed to do a lot of really amazing things on this journey, but every once in a while, something stands out as extra special or super “cool.” The ghost town at Bodie State Historic Park probably ranks up there as one of our most favorite adventures on this trip so far. All five of us absolutely loved our time there. It was awesome.

Bodie is the largest unrestored ghost town in the west. It once swelled to 10,000 residents during its gold mining heyday in the 1880s, but between fires, extreme weather, and decay, only 170 buildings remain. In 1962, Bodie was designated a state historic park and today it is preserved in a state of “arrested decay.” This means the structures are maintained as they were found in 1962, as “preserved ruins.”

Getting to Bodie is an adventure in itself. One must leave the main highway to journey 10 miles down a lonely road with absolutely no structures and no signs of life – human or animal – anywhere. And then the road to nowhere simply ends. There’s another three miles of a very bumpy, unpaved dirt road to go before the remains of Bodie can be spotted around a bend. The elevation is 8,375 feet, just seven miles away from the Nevada border, and the location is as desolate and unfriendly as it gets.

In the summer, there are guides and organized tours, but not on the winter-like fall day we visited. We were nearly alone in the abandoned town. There was not a guide or official anywhere, just a small handful of other hardy visitors. We nearly had the place to ourselves, which made the desolation of the deserted town all the more acute.

With a bawdy reputation as the wildest, wickedness, most lawless town in the U.S., it is said that at least one man was killed every day in Bodie. Street fights, bar brawls, violence, robberies, stage holdups, and murder were entertainment in the modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. Crime was so rampant that even the Ten Commandments were stolen from the church, a mocking of “Thou shalt not steal.”

Morning greetings with neighbors and colleagues were not the usual, “Good morning,” but, “Have a man for breakfast?” It meant, in Bodie-speak, “Who got killed last night?”

At one particularly unpopular killing, the guilty party was lynched by an angry mob. A formal investigation by the justice of the peace was closed with this record, “Case dismissed, as the defendant was taken out and hanged by a mob.”

Famous is the diary of a little girl whose family was moving to the “sea of sin, lashed by the tempests of lust and passion.” Knowing what she faced, she proclaimed morosely, “Goodbye God, I’m going to Bodie.”

Gold was discovered in Bodie in 1859, but it wasn’t until 1878-79 the town suddenly swelled from a population of about 20 to 10,000. With it came over 65 saloons, plus a long list of bordellos and opium dens. Busy “ladies of the night” worked on Maiden Lane and Virgin Alley. The more popular ones bore names like The Beautiful Doll, Madame Mustache, and French Joe.

Between 1860 and 1941, the Bodie Mining District produced nearly $100 million in gold and silver. Theodore Hoover, brother of our 31st president, Herbert Hoover, lived in Bodie. He was the general manager of a major mining company; his presidential brother was similarly trained and had graduated from Stanford as a mining engineer.

What is most captivating about Bodie is that the interiors of the homes, stores, businesses, and buildings remain exactly as they were abandoned. Apparently it was easier to just leave most belongings than haul them out through the mountains. Peering through the windows, one can see dishes, calendars, beds, receipts, toys, and so much more. Pictures still hang precariously on the walls. Curtains still attempt to cover the windows.

Outside the buildings are abandoned tools, rusty tin cans, broken glass, even an old car or two.

One can still make out the seats in some of the outhouses.

The entire place is frozen in time. It’s like a window to the past and it is positively spellbinding. This is the equivalent of Disneyland for anyone who likes history.

To add to the ambiance, this weathervane squeaked and creaked in the wind just like it should, according to every spooky old suspense movie made by Hollywood.

It was freakishly cold during our time at Bodie. The temperature was officially 36 degrees, but the windchill brought that down considerably. Living in Bodie must have been an exercise in endurance. Summers were scorching and unbearably hot, but winters in Bodie could reach 35 degrees below zero, not counting constant winds up to 100mph. Even today, Bodie often hits the mark as the coldest spot in the 48 contiguous states. Oddly enough, Death Valley – often the hottest place in the states – is only about 100 miles away as the crow flies.

Partly due to the bitter winters and partly due to the need for energy for the mills, a worldwide engineering breakthrough occurred in Bodie. Operating under the theory that electricity could be transmitted over wires, engineers built a hydroelectric plant 13 miles away and installed power lines and poles (some of the original which still stand). The switch was thrown and it actually worked. The world’s first motor to be operated over long-distance power lines was right here in Bodie (in 1892). Countries all around the world turned to Bodie with requests to build similar plants. Amusingly to us today, the original power poles and lines were installed in a straight line because it wasn’t believed electricity could turn corners.

Eventually, the town began to decline and in 1910, there were only 698 people left. By 1912, the last Bodie newspaper was printed. By 1917, the Bodie Railway was abandoned. In 1940, there were 90 residents remaining. In 1942, the post office and last mine closed. In 1943, only three people remained. In the early 1960s, Bodie was designated a National Historic Landmark and became a California state historic park. Thank goodness. Other ghost towns pale in comparison. Bodie is one of California’s treasures and has to be one of the most captivating places we’ve ever visited.

The barber shop.

The firehouse.

The morgue -- yes, that's a small casket.