Thursday, December 11, 2008

Hell's Heroes (Bodie Bank Location)

I do not have any gps coordinates for this area, but if you are ever there it is easy to find since it is to the easternmost part of the ghost town. I have not tried, but if I really had to I could probably get approximate coords just looking at some online maps.

The thing to remember is that the fire destroyed a lot of the buildings you will see in the movie. It also destroyed the bank they robbed. Although this area is clearly listed as the "bank" on the pamphlet they give you when you pay your fee to get in, there was a time where I was not certain they used the real bank.

Below I have a picture looking more to the west or southwest where most of the main town structures are. In the movie you can clearly see stuff like the big U.S. Hotel which would have been to the left of this picture. It burned down. If you look closely you maybe able to see the firehouse in middle of the picture. You do see it in the movie a few times.

Here is our bank movie picture. It is the real bank the town had.
Originally, I was not sure about this. I had been to this bank site lots of times. After I saw the movie it still did not click with me. I thought they may have used another building in town because, after all, even back in 1930 a bank would want to reveal too much about itself to would be bank robbers. Since the bank burned down what was it that convinced me this is the right area? It is the Moyle Warehouse foundations to the right side of the picture. Refer to the above picture and compare. Without those it would be a lot harder to show the connection.
There is a chimney type of structure to compare, but even that did not look right. So, the warehouse foundations are the main thing I considered to show it is the same place because all that is left is the vault location. I do not believe they shot the interiors of the real bank in Hell's Heroes. The vault area does not look the same. (UPDATE: I have changed my mind on the interiors...sort of...refer to my blog entry coming in Dec. 2010)
So, I headed to the gated door and looked inside. These are just to show you what the safe looks like inside of the vault.


(EDIT: I have added a new blog entry on Bodie Bank HERE for my December, 2010 Bodie series. Also, I had added a new video:

Bodie's Baddies (Youtube Version)

Bodie's Baddies (Vimeo Version))