博迪的黄金：加州矿业小镇的故事和真实历史

寂静的街道和无人居住的建筑向今天来到博迪（Bodie）的游客致意。博迪是加利福尼亚州典型的鬼城，它掩盖了该镇丰富多彩的过去和前居民丰富多彩的生活。在《博迪的黄金》（Bodie’s Gold）一书中，作者玛格丽特·斯普拉格（Marguerite Sprague）使用了大量的历史文献和最近对幸存的博迪家族的采访，将这座曾经的新兴城市带回到了生活中。
博迪矿区于1860年在该地区发现几处小型金矿后成立。然而，大繁荣直到1878年才开始，当时新的发现和资本雄厚的矿业公司的到来使博迪的大量矿产资源得以开采。有一段时间，该镇的人口每天增加10人，矿场开采了价值数百万美元的黄金，博迪繁荣起来。从很多方面来说，这里发展起来的是一个矛盾的集合体——一个位于东部塞拉高地沙漠中的孤立小镇，夏天尘土飞扬，冬天寒冷寒冷，但在一段时间里，这里拥有一流的餐厅、豪华的酒店和最新的女性时装等城市设施。博迪既是一个粗糙的采矿营地，曾一度是美国谋杀率最高的地方，也是一个普通家庭安居乐业的小镇，一个支持文化项目和慈善事业的备受尊敬的社会网络。
斯普拉格的叙述涵盖了博迪生活的所有细节——矿山和矿工的工作条件；酒馆和妓院；学校、教堂和其他定居生活机构；当地居民的生活，包括当地的库泽迪卡印第安人和中国人；妇女在经济和地方社会中的作用；还有孩子们的经历。繁荣于1880年结束，该镇开始了漫长而缓慢的衰落，作为一个小镇，由几座小型但稳定的矿山支撑，一直延续到20世纪。第二次世界大战结束了采矿业，最后一批永久居民搬走了。1964年，该镇的遗迹被命名为加利福尼亚州立公园。
《博迪的黄金》（Bodie’s Gold）是一本生动的读物，通过大量历史照片和当时报纸的引用，以及对前居民的回忆，生动地描述了曾经在加利福尼亚官方淘金潮鬼城现已关闭的大门和空旷的街道后跳动的生活。
Bodie’s Gold: Tall Tales and True History from a California Mining Town
The silent streets and uninhabited buildings that greet today’s visitors to Bodie, California’s quintessential ghost town, belie the town’s colorful past and the full and varied lives of its former residents. In “Bodie’s Gold”, author Marguerite Sprague uses a wide range of historic documents and recent interviews with surviving Bodieites to bring this former boomtown back to life.
The Bodie Mining District was established in 1860 after the discovery of several small gold deposits in the area. The big boom did not begin until 1878, however, when new discoveries and the arrival of highly capitalized mining companies made possible the exploitation of Bodie’s significant mineral wealth. For a time, the town’s population grew by ten people a day, the mines extracted several million dollars worth of gold, and Bodie flourished. What grew there was in many ways a collection of contradictions–an isolated town in the midst of the Eastern Sierra high desert, dusty in summer and frigid in winter, but for a time endowed with such urban amenities as first-class restaurants, lavish hotels, and the latest in ladies’ fashions. Bodie was both a rough mining camp, which had for a time the highest murder rate in the U.S., and a town where ordinary families lived secure and contented lives and a highly respectable social network supported cultural programs and charitable works.
Sprague’s account covers all the details of Bodie life–the mines and the working conditions of the miners; the demimonde of saloons and brothels; the schools, churches, and other institutions of settled life; the lives of its residents, including the native Kuzedika Indians and the Chinese; the role of women in the economy and in local society; and the experiences of the children. The boom ended in 1880, and the town began its long, slow decline, surviving into the twentieth century as a small town supported by a few small but steady mines. Mining ended with World War II, and the last permanent residents moved away. What remained of the town was named a California state park in 1964.
Enhanced with numerous historic photographs and quotations from newspapers of that period, as well as by the reminiscences of former residents, “Bodie’s Gold” is lively reading, a vivid account of the life that once throbbed behind the now-closed doors and empty streets of California’s official Gold Rush ghost town.

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