Bodie Foundation

10/15/2026

Throwback Thursday

When Emma Douglas entered the Bodie House hotel at Main and Green, Michael L. Wilson the clerk, suspected there would be trouble.

Michael and his brother Newton J Wilson, both came to California from their birthplace of Kentucky. By 1879, they were in Bodie. Newton bought a house on the south end of Fuller Street. He appears on the 1880 census with wife, Hanah and two children, and lists his occupation as farmer. By August 1880, Newton deeded the Fuller St. property to his brother Michael, and moved his family to Bridgeport, where he continued farming.

Once Michael had a home in Bodie, he visited San Francisco apparently looking for a bride. He met Anna Marie Fitzgerald originally from County Cork, Ireland. They were married in late 1881 and made their home in Bodie. Three of their five children would be born in Bodie. Michael ‘s job at the Bodie House hotel involved regularly handling cash and important documents.

The Daily Free Press of October 2, 1881 reported on the incident. “The peace and quiet of the Bodie House were considerably disturbed on Friday afternoon by the presence of Emma Douglas…who appeared in the bar-room with a hatchet.”

Douglas, according to the paper, had been writing anonymous letters to several married and unmarried men in Bodie. “The language used in some of these epistles would make a cowboy blush with envy.”

In an account of the incident in author Roger McGrath’s book, "Gunfighters, Highwaymen & Vigilantes,” it was soon revealed that Wilson had angered Emma Douglas by exposing her as the author of the letters.

Douglas attempted to hack at Wilson with her hatchet as those in the lobby scattered. He dodged her blows and was able to wrestle the hatchet away from her.

An officer of the law soon arrived to take her into custody, and she was convicted a couple days later. A follow-up article noted that since she was unable to pay the $45 fine, she was sent to jail for 45 days.

By 1888, Michael and his family moved to Sonora, where he again worked as a clerk. Sadly, his wife Anna died in 1896 of stomach cancer. Michael, who was now serving as Constable, died three years later of Tuberculosis.

Upon his death, the local paper commented “as a peace officer he was diligent and fearless, and as a citizen gained the respect of all with whom he came in contact.”

Information and photos of Michael and Anna are courtesy of their great granddaughter Diana Petersen.

10/08/2026

Throwback Thursday
Accidents in the mines in Bodie were common and many had deadly consequences. In December 1880, the strong arms of a local wrestler saved a man from a fatal fall down a vertical shaft.

According to the Bodie Daily Free Press of December 28, 1880, on Friday, December 24, John Shaughnessy, a shift boss at the Union shaft in the Virginia Mine was seriously wounded while working in the pumping compartment.

“He was standing on a platform, about 200 feet below the surface when a large iron washer fell from somewhere up toward the top of the shaft and struck him on the head,” reported the newspaper.

Shaughnessy was stunned by the blow and tumbled into the shaft. On the platform below him was William Pellow, local wrestler, who reached out and caught Shaughnessy.

Despite his injuries, Shaughnessy, who was also president of the Bodie Miners’ Union, survived and moved to Tombstone, Arizona. There he continued as a miner at the town’s successful Grand Central mine. He died of pneumonia at the end of January 1892.

Pellow moved onto other towns, including Jackson, California, where he continued as a miner and also remained active in wrestling competitions. While working in the mine, he was injured in two separate accidents which resulted in blindness in both eyes. An article about his death mentioned he traveled in his last years to his native land of Cornwall. He died in March 1908.

Wrestling was popular in Bodie and other mining towns, and advertisements such as the one shown here were seen in local newspapers.

10/04/2026

It's that time again! Start looking through your Bodie photos. Deadline is Sunday, Feb. 7, 2027. For questions about uploading images, use the "Contact Us," section on the contest entry page. https://bodiecalendarcontest.com

10/01/2026

www.bodiefoundation.org

10/01/2026

Throwback Thursday
A nighttime stagecoach ride out of Bodie was dangerous as the shadows along the road could hide “road agents,” looking for riches.

On September 5, 1880, two stagecoach robberies occurred within hours of each other. The first robbery occurred about 9 pm as the Bodie and Carson stage was coming in, reported the Bodie Standard News. After a cry from the bushes to halt, two masked men came up and ordered passengers to come down and hold up their hands. One robber guarded the passengers and the other recovered the Wells Fargo box and removed the contents. Then the passengers were ordered back in the coach and the coach drove on. The passengers were not robbed “and were treated with “every courtesy,” reported the article.

The outbound stage met the robbed stage, and Wells Fargo’s Messenger, Mike Tovey was on board the outbound stage along with the driver and two other Wells Fargo employees. Tovey was eager to find the robbers. As they came to where the other stage had been robbed, Tovey got off to look for footprints. A voice called out from the dark: “You son of a -----, you are sneaking up on us!” Gunfire followed and Tovey escaped being hit, but one of the horses was killed. Tovey got behind the coach with the other Wells Fargo men. Tovey killed one robber who had stepped closer to the coach. Further gunplay led to Tovey being shot in the arm a few minutes later. The other defenders, concerned by the amount of blood coming from Tovey’s arm, took him a short distance away to bind his wound.

In the meantime, another robber returned and ordered the driver to throw down the box. He forced the box open and removed the contents. The paper reported it was not determined how much the robber got from the box, but the earlier stage robbery yielded $200.

Tovey recovered from his wounds and continued to work for Wells Fargo. He was killed by a man who attempted to hold up the regular six-horse stage on the old Ione-Jackson Stage Road in 1893. A memorial marker honors Tovey at the site of his murder: www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=41555.

09/24/2026

Throwback Thursday
We love it when Bodie descendants share their family photos with us!
This photo is from Leslie Bell Hernandez who has deep roots in Bodie. This photo shows her grandmother, Alice Leslie McDonell, who was married to Harry Dolan. With her in the photo is Leslie’s Aunt, Patricia Dolan, and the baby is her mother Marjorie Dolan Bell Voss. Leslie’s grandparents were both born and raised in Bodie and were married at the Catholic Church in Bodie in 1915.

09/21/2026

09/17/2026

In September 1879, the Mexican population of Bodie celebrated “Día de la Independencia,” to remember those who rose up to fight for Mexican independence on September 16, 1810.

The Bodie Morning News reported that the celebration started the night before with a Mexican flag raised on a pole at the corner of Green and Main streets. A large bonfire was built, and Alfredo Ontiveros was introduced to the crowd by Onofre Moreno, President of the Bodie chapter of Junta Patriotica Mexicana. Ontiveros made “a proclamation of independence similar to that made by the liberator of Mexico. Music by the brass band and salvos of artillery — from a huge anvil — made the night one of patriotic pleasure to the participants.”

In the morning, a procession of about 200 marched down Main Street. “A fine-looking set of men, on foot and horseback, their Marshals designated by the rich insignia of their office.”

American and Mexican flags were at the head of the column which marched to the Miners’ Union Hall, where a crowd awaited. After speeches, “Senorita Petra Rodriguez and Senorita Refugia Leon sang the National Hymn of Mexico. This was most exquisitely rendered and to the lovers of good music was a treat they seldom receive in Bodie.”

The article concluded, “We are glad to note the united love of our Mexican fellow citizens to fatherland. It speaks well of their intelligence and proper feeling for the Land of their birth, and their celebration yesterday is a credit to Bodie…we are requested by the officers of the society to give thanks to the American ladies and gentlemen who honored the society with their presence.”

September 16 is one of Mexico's most important holidays. The re-enactment of the famous speech “Grito de Dolores,” the cry for independence, is held every year in towns and cities across Mexico. The words were originally spoken by Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla who rang the bell of his church in the town of Dolores and inspired the first Mexican revolution that eventually freed Mexico from Spanish rule. Hidalgo was executed the next year, but the movement and subsequent war resulted in Mexico’s independence in 1821.

09/16/2026

09/10/2026

Throwback Thursday
While Bodie’s boom period from 1877 to 1881 attracts much attention for the wh***ey drinking, quarreling, duels and fatal shootings, the late 1920s saw an upswing in “social” activities when two new mining companies came to town.

The Clinton-West Company was headed by E.J. Clinton, former owner of a San Francisco restaurant, and W. D. “Billy” West, who had Klondike mining experience. They saw great opportunities in Bodie’s waste rocks and built a treatment plant to extract the remaining gold and silver. A year later, the Treadwell-Yukon Company, Ltd. arrived. This company would attempt to drain the Red Cloud mine, where excessive water for years had stymied miners’ attempts to extract gold and silver.

One witness to the town’s later years was Robert T. “Bobby” Bell, born in 1914 in Bodie. Michael H. Piatt, author of “Bodie: The Mines Are Looking Well,” did several interviews with Bobby, who died in 2003.

Bobby, like his father and grandfather before him, went into the mining business, getting his first job as a miner at age 15. He witnessed the effects of the added population when Clinton-West’s 20-man workforce and the 150 men from Treadwell Yukon arrived. He recalled 20 saloons suddenly opened up.

“That was Prohibition,” said Bobby. “You weren’t supposed to have booze, but Bodie still had saloons. Hell, I guess they had saloons! The whole street was full of them. There were a lot of people in town then – lot of kids too…Everywhere was gambling. They had all kinds of it, even roulette wheels and a few other things that took your money. There were a lot of gambling joints there. The 30s was when things were really wheeling and dealing. The lights were on all night, I’ll tell ya.”

Perhaps those “lights” brought unwanted attention. On Sept. 16, 1930, Prohibition agents “with little regard for tradition, visited 14 establishments on Bodie’s main street,” reported the San Bernardino County Sun Newspaper.

Various “illegal beverages” were seized, and the agents marched 14 proprietors to the office of Justice of the Peace W.T. Powers, where they posted $1,500 bail each for alleged violation of the prohibition law.