Telegraph Poles- Bodie, Cal

Bodie, California- Old Flatbed Truck, Telephone Poles, and mining tailings from the Standard Mile.

Forgotten in time- once a Miners home- abandoned- then left to become a forget reminder of a “mining town,” with inhabitance. Miners with families.

The Telegraph Poles, which once held the wires of the Telegraph Office. The information of daily reporting of “assay,” so important to the San Francisco Stock Market. The daily “mine stock price” determining the next days “blasting below.”

Mining “telegraph messages” were tapped out in CODE. Bodie Telegrams were once sent in such “code”- with over 2,000 different words and numbers that hid the confidential meanings of Bodie’s actual future Mining financial prosperity

The mining town practice of sending CODED telegrams, had begun in Virginia City, no Telegram Operator could glem or suspect “a rich strike” or a decline in “assays to cause a Banking Panic.”

In San Francisco, Carson City, Bodie the Telegram’s were sent and received without knowledge of the Operator knowing their True Content. Code-words changed often- the slang and nicknames for Mines went unnoticed by the Telegraph Office.

No one was trusted with “mining knowledge or information.” Only “who was sending and receiving,” the daily telegrams was of notice- never the content or concern of the messages. Disaster, Fire and Death were the only telegrams sent “uncoded.”

The Telegraph Poles and the wires are part of Bodie’s mining history. The “stock price” was determined by the constant flow of telegrams from Bodie. Keeping the various Newspaper filled with “Good New and positive progress” is what kept the Bodie Mining enterprises in speculative money and Miners payed with their “assay assessment .”