“The 601 rode that night – six feet under, no judge, one rope.” Some tales are just so timeless, it’s impossible not to get roped in. For me, the ghost town of Bodie, CA – “winter population, 5” – is the perfect setting. Maybe it’s because, growing up, I had a slice of that kind of offbeat Americana as a personal play place – see below.
Or maybe it’s because, pre-quarantine, we all liked to imagine what our too-busy lives might be like far from the madding crowd.
My own personal fantasies of unforced isolation often stray to the caretaker couple at Barr Camp on the trail up Pike’s Peak. Insanely busy all summer, they only had to deal with the occasional snow-shoe guest for dinner-breakfast-overnight come dead of winter. Well, that and splitting 20 cords of firewood.
But I guess there’s just something special about old Gold Rush places, preserved like flies in amber. They capture the spirit and the imagination of the American West in ways few other places can. The full piece about Bodie, CA is here. Definitely worth a read if you like quirky. Down by Mono Lake, just out the back door of Yosemite, you’ll likely never lay eyes on it unless you get hopelessly lost xc-skiing the back country of the eastern Sierra. For those whose job it is to preserve the relics here, that’s just fine by them.
As for last word on The 601 …
One infamous Bodie story goes that during a night ball at the Miners’ Union Hall, two men got into a verbal altercation over one of them dancing with the other man’s wife. They were separated, but one came back a few minutes later and shot the other fellow in the head. He rode off into the night, but an impromptu vigilante group caught up with him six miles later. They brought him back to town and hung him from the tree where the murder took place. Tour guides still proclaim that “the 601 rode that night” — the code that the vigilante group gave itself. It stands for six feet under, no judge, one rope. Ummm… maybe? There’s no factual basis for it, but it sure sounds awesome, right?
