Putting Bodie in its place: A thematic gazetteer of a California ghost town

Abstract

America has long recognized that protection and preservation of its cultural landmarks are in the public interest and crucial to maintaining its legacy of cultural resources for future generations. Despite these efforts, many historical sites continue to be lost. Bodie State Historic Park, one of 278 historically significant sites within the California State Park system, represents one such at-risk landmark.

This thesis is intended to augment current efforts to preserve and promote this unique cultural landscape by developing a GIS-based inventory of the nearly 170 buildings that comprise the remnants of Bodie, and creating a GIS-based thematic gazetteer that links historical attributes with the built environment. The chapters that follow describe ways in which GIS has been specifically adapted for use in historical research, and demonstrate that traditional methods of historical landscape reconstruction and visualization in GIS can be enhanced through the use of site-specific, high-resolution aerial imagery and photogrammetry.