Identifier	ov078
Title	Bodie, California. Drilling Contest
Creator	Unknown;
Date Created	circa 1880s
Description	Drilling contest at Bodie, California; John Black is recorded as the umpire. Participants with drills at bottom-right, around rock. Mine shaft and houses on opposite slope. A copy made in 1952 of original photograph. Title supplied by cataloger.
Historical Background	This photograph shows the miners of Bodie, California, participating in a contest related to their occupational skills of mining. John Black, the umpire, was the father of J. D. Black and in some type of partnership with John McAlpin in Bodie. Black lived in Bodie before moving to Bishop in 1886. Located at nearly 8400 feet above sea level in the Sierra Nevada, Bodie, California, was a major center for the mining of gold. Gold was first found there in 1859 but not until the late 1870s did the gold mining industry take off. From such mines as the Standard Consolidated and the Bodie Consolidated, some $30,000,000 worth of gold and silver was extracted. By 1880 Bodie had a population of 10,000 and a reputation as one of the tougher and bawdier of the California mining towns. The decade of the 1880s saw the decline of the mining industry, although the development of the cyanide process in the 1890s for the recovery of gold and silver from mine tailings helped stem the decline. In 1932 a fire destroyed part of Bodie. A ghost town, Bodie is preserved as a California state park.
Type	image;
Physical Description	1 photograph : b&w ; 11 x 17 cm
Institution	Center for the Study of Los Angeles Research Collection, Loyola Marymount University
Collection Identifier	http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt3w1022nb
Country of Creation	US
Copyright Status	Public Domain
Copyright Statement	http://library.lmu.edu/dlp/copyright.htm
Language	eng;
Subject (Name)	Black, John;
Subject (Place)	Bodie (Calif.); Sierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.);
Subject (Topic)	Gold miners--California--Bodie; Gold mines and mining--California--Bodie; Boring--California--Bodie; Ghost towns--California--Bodie;
Form/Genre	Photographs;
Metacollection Identifier	http://digitalcollections.lmu.edu/
Item/Call Number	J. D. Black Papers, CSLA-15, Series 3: Photographs, Box 16, Sleeve 46