After making the trek to the Chemung mine, we wanted to keep going and take the dirt road all the way to Masonic, about a 20 minute drive. The drive was mild for the most part. Two things that stuck out along the way 1) the views looking out to the opposite side/mountain range in the Bridgeport valley was really great, 2) lots of Aspen trees made me think how nice the fall colors would be in this area.
The Masonic road is also known as the Bodie-Masonic road and you come to a fork where you either veer right to drive to Bodie (definitely need 4×4 for this) or veer left to go to Masonic. I’d strongly suggest driving in an AWD vehicle for this drive due to the soft/fine sand and dirt in areas while needing to uphill. Once here, it was great to hike around the buildings and see all the area mined and tailings.
What grabbed my attention the most was the far distant and pretty tall peak that had a metal arch at the top, reaching for the sky. Making line of sight back down here to the mine structures. There is a long collapsed and rusted set of cables the actually goes up to the top structure here in the mining town. Starting with picture 10 below, you can see what I’m describing as well as where those cables were terminated deep into the ground at the top mining structure. A couple of my photos show the frayed cable that snapped. This is easily a distance of a couple miles and also going uphill while transporting the ore. Pretty amazing!
The Alpha Landscape 
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