Bodie State Historic Park

The ranger is explaining how rock was blasted out of the mining tunnels, and brought into the building by means of an aerial line of cars like the empty containers at his side. The system was designed by Andrew Hallidie, who later developed the San Francisco cable cars.

Inside the mill, the rock was pulverized by "stamps," something like steel battering rams run like pistons on rotating cam shafts. The stamps operated around the clock, six days a week, reducing the rock to the consistency of fine sand. Gold was then separated through the use of chemical agents including copper, mercury and cyanide.

Take your pick - underground dynamite, the deafening noise of the stamp room, or the poisons of the chemical process. The video of the U2 song Red Hill Mining Town, from their Joshua Tree album, presents an interpretation of what it may have been like. The band visited Bodie in 1986 to do promotional photography for that album.