Exploring Text: Bodie: The most famous ghost town in America

In the 1870s, thirty mines were established and began yielding significant quantities of gold. The Standard Company was among the first enterprises in America to extract residual gold using electricity. The chemical process occurred in two stages. Initially, workers washed crushed ore over copper sheets coated with mercury to capture gold, which was then heated to vaporize and condense the mercury, resulting in the formation of gold bars. In a second stage aimed at recovering any remaining gold and silver particles, the crushed ore, now resembling sand, was immersed in diluted potassium cyanide. This process continued for about 70 years until the gold mines were exhausted.

When the California State Parks Department assumed control of Bodie in 1962, it initiated a strategy of 'controlled dilapidation,' preserving the deteriorating structures exactly as they were at the time of acquisition.

According to Charley Spiller, a maintenance technician in Bodie, the primary adversaries of preservation are the wind, which can reach speeds of up to 100 miles per hour in the nearby mountains, and snow, averaging 13 feet annually. When snow infiltrates a building and settles, it accelerates the deterioration of the floors, often leading to their decay. Currently, a team of three to four workers devotes six months each year to this task.

Repairing walls, fixing roofs, and replacing broken windows. Spiller and his team reconstruct walls using pine wood similar to the native Jeffrey pine originally used. Without continuous maintenance, most houses would deteriorate. Nearby towns resembling Bodie have already vanished due to various reasons.

While the staff strive to maintain the town's abandoned appearance, diverse wildlife thrives among the town's remains. California ground squirrels burrow into the shrub-covered soil, feeding on meadow grass and bitterbrush. Coyotes - occasionally joined by mountain lions, bobcats, or bears - roam through the town. As people departed Bodie and no new residents moved in, the houses became havens for species that flourish in uninhabited areas, such as deer, mice, snakes, and lizards. Trillions of microbes, invisible to the naked eye, also inhabit the soil, including some capable of metabolizing the toxic byproducts of mining, such as mercury and cyanide. A microbial ecologist discovered that deserts like Bodie's harbor nearly twice as many bacterial species - about 10,000 per 10 square meters - as acidic rainforest soils. Thus, the deserts of the American West, dotted with thousands of ghost towns, surprisingly teem with life.

However, it is the departed life of Bodie that captivates most tourists who visit. Ghost towns like Bodie, explains cultural geographer Dydia DeLyser, exert a powerful allure because they are perceived as genuine - actual abandoned towns preserved more or less as they were left, and thus as they once existed. DeLyser notes that visitors scrutinize their authenticity, posing questions such as 'Was all this stuff truly left behind?' or 'Was it staged to resemble a ghost town?' According to DeLyser, it would be erroneous for anyone to assume that the items found in Bodie, such as plates on tables, were abandoned in haste.

Questions 1-7

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD AND/ OR A NUMBER from the Passage for each answer.

Enter your responses in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

Bodie’s past

Regarding Bodie

• Located in a 1 … in the Sierra Nevada.
• In the 1870s attracted people who wanted to be 2 … in order to get rich.
• Saw the end of gold production in the 1940s.
• Now has about 3 … Of the original buildings.

Gold extraction and processing

• Large- scale production of gold
• Extraction of smaller amounts of gold required 4 …
• Extraction by chemical processing involved:
• First stage:
• Ore was rinsed over mercury- covered sheets of 5 …
• Melted mixture was formed into bars
• Second stage (to filter any leftover gold or silver particles):
• Ore with texture like 6 … was immersed in potassium cyanide.
• Mentals were taken out and caught in containers filled with 7 …

Questions 8-13

Are the following statements consistent with the information provided in Reading Passage 1?

In sections 8-13 of your answer sheet, write

TRUE                               if the statement agree with the information

FALE                                if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN                     if there is no information on this.

8 Wind and snow are the most difficult factors Bodie preservationists have to deal with

9 The maintenance team in Bodie was unable to locate the Jeffrey pine the settlers

10 Lack of funding has caused other towns like Bodie to disappear.

11 Many people left Bodie when wild animals started living in their homes.

12 Acidic rainforest soils tend to contain more microbes than the soil found in places like desserts.

13 Some tourists doubt that items in Bodie were really used by people who lived there.

Responses

1. Valley (Đoạn 1, “wooden boxes and shelves with tin cans Situated in a sagebrush- covered valley in the eastern foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range”)

2. miners (Đoạn 1, “when prospective miners arrived in the town in hopes of finding gold and becoming wealthy.”)

3. 20 percent (Đoạn 1, “…there is about 20 percent of the number that stood in the 1870s, when the town had up to 8.000 inhabitants.”)

4. Electricity (Đoạn 2, “…to extract the remaining traces of gold using electricity.”)

5. copper (Đoạn 2, “ In the first stage, workers washed ground up ore over copper sheets covered with gold- grabbing mercury”)

6. Sand (Đoạn 2, “the one, now the consistency of sand was soaked in watered- down potassium cyanide.”)

7. Zinc (Đoạn 2, “This drew the metals out into a form that could be trapped by trays containing small pieces of zinc.”)

8. TRUE (Đoạn 4, “…the greatest enemies of preservation are wind, which can gust up to 100 miles an hour on nearby mountains, and snow, which average 13 feet a year. When snow gets into a building and sits and….”

9. NOT GIVEN (Không có thông tin)

10. NOT GIVEN (Không có thông tin)

11. FALSE (Đoạn 6, “As people left their homes in Bodies and no one else moved in, the houses became popular havens for species that thrive in the empty places, such as deer, mice, snakes, and lizards.” → Sau khi người rời đi thì động vật mới vào sinh sống)

12. FALSE (Đoạn 7, “One microbial ecologist found that deserts, like the one in Bodie, contain up to twice as many bacterial species, roughly 10,000 per 10 square meters, as do acidic rainforest soils.” → sa mạc chứa gấp đôi lượng vi sinh vật so với đất ở Bodie)