The Bridgeport Inn looks much like it did when it was a stagecoach stop. Photo by David DeVoss
It was a beautiful autumn day in 1887 when Mac McGillivray and his young fiancée Sarah climbed into a freight wagon loaded with gold ingots and left the California mining town of Bodie, headed to Bridgeport 18 miles away. The county seat had an elegant hotel, built only ten years before called the Bridgeport Inn, and a skilled seamstress, who had just completed Sarah’s white bridal dress. Mac would leave Sarah at the hotel for one night while he went to Carson City along with three armed bank guards to deposit the gold before returning to Bridgeport the following day on a stagecoach to prepare for their wedding.
Sarah joined the family who owned the hotel for a venison supper before retiring to Room 19 to dream about her soon-to-be husband and their married life to come. Around midnight she was awakened by loud voices downstairs followed by urgent knocking on her door. It was the hotel owner’s daughter with horrible news: her fiancé was dead, killed by highway bandits along with the three bank guards. The gold was gone along with her idyllic future.
When dawn finally arrived, Sarah dressed in her wedding gown and wandered aimlessly about the Inn trying to imagine a life without Mac and the family they had planned. Returning to Bodie, with its 65 saloons and bordellos was out of the question, Neither was the prospect of returning home to live with her father on the Yosemite side of the mountain very appealing.
Between Life and Death
That night, wearing a bridal gown now stained with tears, she slowly climbed the steep stairwell to her room on the second floor, quietly slipped a noose around her neck and hung herself. When the body of “The White Lady” was discovered the following morning, a note lay beneath it. “Mac was my only love, my partner for life,” it read. “I wait for him here where we shared our dreams.”
Many citizens of Mono County believe The Bridgeport Inn’s Room 19 is haunted by the White Lady. Photo by David DeVoss
People living along the hardscrabble eastern slope of the Sierra Mountains learn the story of The White Lady when they are children. Today, the tale is known to multiple generations settled around the alpine lakes and desert scapes that define the border between California and Nevada. It’s a story you can experience if you stop in Bridgeport while driving between the Sonora and Tioga mountain passes on CA 395.
Four months ago, I came to Bridgeport in search of The White Lady. I arrived during a full moon with a reservation for the same tiny room where she died. If I failed to see Sarah perhaps, I might at least sense her spectral presence.
Plenty of Atmosphere
Bathed in an evening glow filtering over the Sierras, the Inn seemed dipped in amber. Inside, the 19th-century vibe was even more pronounced. If the hotel bar looks like a place Mark Twain might have enjoyed, it’s because he probably did. Room 16 at the top of the stairs is the Mark Twain suite.
In many ways, time seems to stand still. The Inn has a parlor instead of a lobby where visitors check in. Much of the furniture once belonged to Virginia City mansions built by Nevada silver tycoons. On one side of the room stands a burnished potbellied stove. Against the opposite wall is a victrola and a radio the size of a chest of drawers that a family close to a century ago might have used to listen to presidential fireside chats.
The Bridgeport Inn has a parlor instead of a lobby. Photo by David DeVoss
“I’m here to see The White Lady,” I tell receptionist Neva Baker. “Room 19. There’s a reservation.” She responds with a tepid smile followed by a warning. “We’ve had people check in and go upstairs without knowing our story. Occasionally, they come running back down, yelling, ‘There’s a ghost in this place.”
Ghost Stories
Housekeepers at the Inn report that lights often flicker in areas not open to the public and noises emerge from unoccupied rooms. “Ten years ago, when I tried to open the door to Room 25 somebody inside screamed, ‘I’m here.’ It was a man’s voice,” remembers hotel owner John Peters. A Mono County Supervisor, who spends most of his waking hours across the highway in the 145-year-old County Courthouse, Peters moved to Bridgeport in 1999 when his father bought the Inn. Since then, he has confronted his otherworldly guests on numerous occasions, most often dealing with maintenance and electrical issues.
Bridgeport Inn owner John Peters also serves as a County Supervisor. Photo by David DeVoss
But, really, has John Peters ever seen the White Lady? “My father was often asked that question after he bought the Inn. He’d always glance at his wife and smile, ‘I’ve slept next to her for two years.”
After enjoying several drinks and a dinner consisting of seared ahi tuna salad and a filet mignon, I adjourned to the Inn’s front porch and grabbed a rocking chair. During the Bridgeport Inn’s early decades, it was a stagecoach stop, and today it still feels like an Old West icon. It remains a 19th-century wooden hotel of the sort built following the 1849 Gold Rush when 300,000 people pioneered both sides of the Sierra Nevada. Many of the rooms, designed for single men, have access to showers at the back of the hotel next to the wooden fire escape. There are “cowboy” rooms on the second floor and smaller, uninhabited “teamster” rooms higher up.
Time For Bed
Guests take the stairs up to their rooms at the Bridgeport Inn. The 19th-century hotel has no elevator. Photo by David DeVoss
As midnight approached, I climbed the same stairs Sarah did 137 years before, walked past the Mark Twain suite, and pushed past a metal door into a dark corridor lined with rooms originally intended for cowboys. On the left, halfway down, was Rm 19, a basic accommodation where one might remain for a night before moving on.
Scrunched into a fetal position beneath the covers, I tried to imagine what my upcoming encounter might be like. Many ghosts still roam California’s gold fields, and I was certain the White Lady would be nothing like the obese Chinese specter in Bodie who periodically appears in the window of one of the ghost town’s abandoned houses. She is a malevolent spirit who rudely squats on sleeping park rangers in the middle of the night. The White Lady will be demure with ethereal beauty, I dream. I will follow her anywhere, except toward a bright light at the end of a tunnel.
More Sound Than Sight
Just after 3:00 am somebody runs past my room. But when I open the door nothing’s there save for the sound of creaking floorboards. There’s a gentle breeze blowing past the room, strange since both ends of the hall are closed. Neva Baker said earlier that when the White Lady is present “the air feels warped.” My camera is ready, but I can’t photograph a feeling.
Known by his pen name Mark Twain, writer Samuel Clemens Stayed in the Bridgeport Inn’s Room 16. The most famous guest, however, may be a ghost known as the White Lady. Photo by David DeVoss
It’s two hours before dawn when I return to the White Lady’s bedroom. Room 19 is the last place I want to be. Fortunately, I planned ahead and also reserved Room 16. Maybe Sam Clemens will tell some stories about his early life as a journalist in Virginia City.
David DeVoss is the editor of the East-West News Service and is also a correspondent. Please see his Dispatch on Lhasa and the Road to Shangri-La