The Great Death Valley Borax Deposits
(and all sorts of wonderful evaporate minerals!)
California’s “Death Valley” is hot . . . very dry and very hot. It is located in the eastern part of California on the Nevada border. It is found within the Mojave Desert. It is called Death Valley because it is very easy to die there. Those who travel through the area quickly learn that this region is the hottest, driest and lowest region in all of North America. It is so hot and so dry it will take the water right out of your body. If you don’t drink a lot of water, you will quickly suffer from loss of water (called “dehydration”) and die.
Death Valley lies in a geologic region known as the Great Basin. Most of Death Valley is in Inyo County, California. Searles Lake, one of the best known localities for evaporate minerals (like halite, hanksite, thenardite, borax and more) is found in the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County.
In 1881, a successful California businessman named William T. Coleman filed a claim on the massive borax deposits that are found in Death Valley. He set up a company to mine the borax and called it the Harmony Borax Works. He had discovered more borax than he could ever mine and sell in his own lifetime. But there was a problem. His Borax Works were more than 165 miles away from the trains that could move the ore to businesses and customers. The story goes that the manager of the mines, Mr. J. Perry, and a mule-driver named Stiles hitched twenty mules together to form a mule team that was 100 feet long. Actually there were 18 mules and 2 horses in each “team.” The teams would pull the load of borax out of Death Valley, over the Panamint Mountains and across the Mohave Desert to the train junction. Each team of mules would pull two wagons filled with borax ore and a water tank. All together, the wagons, the water tank and its water weighed 36 ½ tons! It is estimated that in six years, from 1883 to 1889, these “20 Mule Teams” pulled more than 20 million pounds of borax ore out of Death Valley. It is claimed that in that time, not a single mule died doing its job and not a single wagon ever broke down!
Searles Lake is famous for the long list of evaporate minerals that form in and around the lake. “Evaporate minerals” are minerals that are dissolved in water and crystallize as the water evaporates. The minerals found there include halite, hanksite, borax, tincalconite, thenardite,
gypsum, ulexite, searlesite, and trona, to name only a few. Borax was mined from Searles Lake by John W. Searles, the “Borax King,” beginning in 1873. He called his company the San Bernardino Borax Mining Company. Because the borax industry is so important in California’s history, the Searles Lake borax discovery is an official California Historical Landmark.
(and all sorts of wonderful evaporate minerals!)
California’s “Death Valley” is hot . . . very dry and very hot. It is located in the eastern part of California on the Nevada border. It is found within the Mojave Desert. It is called Death Valley because it is very easy to die there. Those who travel through the area quickly learn that this region is the hottest, driest and lowest region in all of North America. It is so hot and so dry it will take the water right out of your body. If you don’t drink a lot of water, you will quickly suffer from loss of water (called “dehydration”) and die.
Death Valley lies in a geologic region known as the Great Basin. Most of Death Valley is in Inyo County, California. Searles Lake, one of the best known localities for evaporate minerals (like halite, hanksite, thenardite, borax and more) is found in the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County.
In 1881, a successful California businessman named William T. Coleman filed a claim on the massive borax deposits that are found in Death Valley. He set up a company to mine the borax and called it the Harmony Borax Works. He had discovered more borax than he could ever mine and sell in his own lifetime. But there was a problem. His Borax Works were more than 165 miles away from the trains that could move the ore to businesses and customers. The story goes that the manager of the mines, Mr. J. Perry, and a mule-driver named Stiles hitched twenty mules together to form a mule team that was 100 feet long. Actually there were 18 mules and 2 horses in each “team.” The teams would pull the load of borax out of Death Valley, over the Panamint Mountains and across the Mohave Desert to the train junction. Each team of mules would pull two wagons filled with borax ore and a water tank. All together, the wagons, the water tank and its water weighed 36 ½ tons! It is estimated that in six years, from 1883 to 1889, these “20 Mule Teams” pulled more than 20 million pounds of borax ore out of Death Valley. It is claimed that in that time, not a single mule died doing its job and not a single wagon ever broke down!
Searles Lake is famous for the long list of evaporate minerals that form in and around the lake. “Evaporate minerals” are minerals that are dissolved in water and crystallize as the water evaporates. The minerals found there include halite, hanksite, borax, tincalconite, thenardite,
gypsum, ulexite, searlesite, and trona, to name only a few. Borax was mined from Searles Lake by John W. Searles, the “Borax King,” beginning in 1873. He called his company the San Bernardino Borax Mining Company. Because the borax industry is so important in California’s history, the Searles Lake borax discovery is an official California Historical Landmark.
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