My post about my motorcycle trip week before last stopped the night before I visited the ghost town of Bodie, and before continuing with current posts I want to share some photos I took there. Several people had encouraged me to visit this preserved ghost town, which had its heyday around 1877-1879, then went through a slow decline.

There is plenty of information available about the town; this Wikipedia entry is a good introduction.

It’s hard to see this scene and imagine a rollicking town of 7,000 in 1879.

This was an apothecary and general store, photographed through a front window.

The state of California bought the town in the 1960s and turned it into a State Historical Park, maintained at a level of “arrested decay”, meaning that roofs and windows would be repaired to protect from the harsh climate, but it would otherwise remain undeveloped.

This window captures the scene pretty well. The state repairs roofs and windows, just enough to arrest the decay from the harsh weather.

For me the unexpected highlight of my visit was a tour of the main stamp mill, built in 1892 after a fire destroyed its predecessor.

This view of the stamp mill was taken through the wooden structure supporting the flume carrying the gold and silver ore in for crushing to fine powder.

In order to preserve the remarkable machinery inside the mill, I signed up for a tour with a volunteer docent.

Our tour was led by this volunteer, who clearly loved to show the inner workings of the mill and the town.

I learned that some industrial-age history was made here. This mill used electricity, rather than the more common steam power of the day, to run its huge machines. This was the classic Edison (General Electric’s founder) and Tesla (Westinghouse) AC versus DC battle off the 1890s – see this Wikipedia entry for the story. The mine owner asked each man if they could bring electrical energy over a long distance. Edison claimed a limit with his direct current (DC) energy, while Tesla claimed correctly that his alternating current (AC) could travel for miles.

Here’s an edited excerpt from a BLM entry about the hydroelectric plant that was built in nearby mountains:

[The superintendent of the mine] proceeded on his theory that electricity could be transmitted over wires from a distance. In 1892, Dynamo Pond and its powerhouse about a half mile below were built for hydroelectric power that could develop 6,600 volts and 130 horsepower. By November of 1892, hydroelectric power was generated and transmitted to the Standard Consolidated Mill at Bodie, a distance of 13 miles. Prior to this time, electric power had been used solely at its point of generation; this was the first time it had been transmitted any distance. The lines were installed in a straight line, as it was feared the electricity would not be able to turn corners. News of this engineering breakthrough spread clear around the world, and the engineers soon received requests to build similar hydroelectric plants from as far away as Rhodesia and Australia.

This gets interesting to me as an energy nerd. Apparently this huge (for the time) supply of electricity at the mill powered both AC and Dc motors. Here are two photos I took of a DC motor at the mill:

Here are two views of an Edison DC electric motor built around 1892.

This is a Tesla AC motor, also built around 1892.

I learned that the black object at the top of this photo is an extremely rare Tesla transformer, to step down 6,600 volts to a usable range. This is Tesla as in Nicolai, not Tesla as in electric car.

The next day I rode through the tiny town of Bridgeport, where I had heard about the town’s museum. It turned out to be closed on Mondays, but outside was the original hydroelectric generator that generated the electricity that was carried by wires the thirteen miles to Bodie. This completed the cycle, so to speak, for me, and I photographed this beautiful old machine.

This is Big Machinery from my perspective. The hydroelectric generator has two pelton wheels that spin by the force of water on the cups. The generator is in the middle between them.

The original top placard tells us that this generator produced 400,000 watts, 2,400 volts, three phase, spinning at 327 revolutions per minute; all from the force of falling water.

After Bodie and up into the Sierra from Bridgeport I found lovely Buckeye Hot Springs and took a naked soak to wash my body. The hot water comes out of the earth above Buckeye Creek. It flows down travertine rock in such a way that it forms a hot waterfall to create a warm pool alongside the creek.

I could sit behind this little hot waterfall looking out, warming and cooling my body as I moved about.

Later I stopped for the night at the only public campground of this trip, at Trumbull Lake, west and up above Mono Lake. This is a photo of the lake with the early morning sun on a mountain behind it.