On February 19, 1881 the Bodie Railway and Lumber Company was founded. Its purpose was to feed Bodie with lumber for building, and firewood for stoking the many stoves in town as well as the numerous steam engines that powered the mills and businesses. At one end of the line was Bodie, at the other end was Mono Mills, where the timber was aggregated and milled, before being loaded onto flat cars and sent up the mountain via Warm Springs and Lime Kiln.
The line between Mono Mills and Bodie changed names several times, but the line was always the same. The map below will load with the route of the railroad bed (as best as can be recreated.) Here’s a map from the book “Railroads of Nevada and Eastern California, Vol. 1: The Northern Roads“.
Mono Mills was capable of processing 80,000 board-feet in a single 10 hour shift. And, like Bodie, it burned wood to power a steam engine for cutting the wood. But, when the Hydroelectric Power Plant was built at Green Creek, Bodie and the surrounding mills and mines needed less firewood, and so on September 7, 1917 the Bodie & Benton Railway (Mono Railway) was abandoned and sold for scrap.
View Bodie and Benton Railway route on a larger map
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