The Wild West is ingrained in most folks of my generation. To photograph an actual western mining town, as opposed to the more or less accurate Hollywood depictions of the same, was a great thrill.

Located east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, about 121 km southeast of Lake Tahoe, Bodie became a boom town in 1876 after a profitable line of gold was discovered. By 1879, it had a population of 7,000–10,000. By the early 1940s, only a few people remained in Bodie and the town eventually became a California Historic Landmark, preserved in a state of arrested decay.