Bodie and Benton right of way is still largely intact by Mono Lake, and you can drive it around Mono Lake all the way to Mono Mills, from the Pole Road to Hawthorne, with 4 wheel drive recommended, and don't stop on the soft fine pumice patches.

Up to Bodie, from Mono Lake at about 6800 feet, at over 8300 feet required some serous switchbacks, which lead to the discovery, recovery, and restoration of a Bodie and Benton flat car for wood, which was, and maybe(?) still can be seen at the park in June Lake, CA. At the top of the Hill at the edge of the State Park is where the RR ended (at the top of the hill past the schoolhouse). Some of this area is under current mining and fenced off, however.

While a lot of cool stuff still exists in Bodie, from the church to the undertaker, much of Bodie burned to the ground in the 1930's (IIRC), and at one time was over ten times the size of what you see today, and filled most of the Valley around Bodie.

At around 8300 feet, and with steam technology for the mines and stamp mills, Bodie required a constant supply of fire wood, and timber for mining and construction, thus the RR was built as far as Mono Mills, located off of the Benton Highway (south of Lee Vining), way out past the Mono Lake tufa deposits, to the other side of the Mono Craters, where there still is a huge dry pine forest, where the cut timber and hauled in to the mill. There ain't much to see, though.

It was said, way back in my misspent youth, that the set of logging equipment on display in June Lake may have come from Mono Mills. I never heard that one confirmed by anything real, however. But, those big horse powered rigs will give you a better idea, how they handled big stuff like logs or choo-choo's back then, with really-really big wagons, and lots and lots of horsey's and mules. That's the visual lesson in why choo-choo's were so successful, a lot cheaper on feed bills.....

Check out Mule Days, too....