Joseph Scanavino

One of the Seeds Joseph Scanavino

While the former gold rush town Bodie was becoming a ghost town, the early Scanavino family was busy earning their American dream on a farm they called the Goat Ranch. The adult Scanavino children worked to keep the roads open and the lights on for the Bodie watchman. Eventually, Bodie was abandoned, including the Goat Ranch, except for a caretaker to preserve and protect the property.

This is a grandson's memoir and story about the early Scanavino family who sold potatoes and hay to the declining mining town of Bodie during the early 1900s. The Scanavino family lived on a farm they called the Goat Ranch, located on the Bodie-Lundy road, eight miles north of Mono Lake, California. My grandparents, Giuseppe and Maria Scanavino, were pioneers in Mono County farming and pathfinders of education in northern Mono Lake basin and within the eastern district of historic ghost town Bodie near Bridgeport and Lee Vining, California. The grandson's story reveals how the Scanavino family lived in relation to the history of Bodie and Mono County during the late 1890s and early 1900s.