BGuthrie Photos: CA -- Death Valley Natl Park -- Furnace Creek

CA -- Death Valley Natl Park -- Furnace Creek:

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Description of Pictures: Includes the Furnace Creek Inn and the Borax Museum

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. DEATFC_120709_100.JPG: Death Valley 49ers Gateway Through this natural gateway the Death Valley Forty-niners. More than one hundred emigrants from the middle west seeking a shortcut to gold fields of central California, entered Death Valley in December,1849. All suffered from thirst and starvation. Two contingents went southwest from here, the others proceeded northward seeking an escape from region.
2. DEATFC_120709_131.JPG: Old Dinah 1894 Steam tractor and ore wagons introduced at Old Borate to replace the twenty mule teams and replaced in turn by the Borate and Daggett Railroad. The tractor was later used and abandoned on the Beatty-Keane Wonder Mine in Death Valley. Furnace Creek Resort Death Valley, California USA
3. DEATFC_120709_138.JPG: Furnace Creek Ranch, Death Valley Furnace Creek is a spring fed stream flowing into Death Valley. Native Americans lived here centuries prior to its discovery by lost Forty Niners. In 1881, Aaron Winters found borax nearby, and sold his claims and water rights to William Tell Coleman. Greenland Ranch was constructed at this site to support the borax workmen and twenty-mule teams. Francis Marion Smith acquired the site for his company which became US Borax and renamed it Furnace Creek Ranch. They produced borax in the valley until 1927. The Ranch was opened to guests in 1932. The Museum was set up by Harry Gower and Ann Rosener in 1954 in the oldest structure in the Valley, built about 1883. Fred Harvey Company purchased the Death Valley properties from US Borax in 1969.
4. DEATFC_120709_145.JPG: This building was constructed in 1883 by F.M. "Borax" Smith, founder of the Pacific Coast Borax Co. The oldest house in Death Valley, it stood originally in Twenty Mule Team Canyon where it was office, bunk house and ore-checking station for miners at the Monte Blanco deposits. The objects within and around it were assembled by the company so that visitors to the Valley might better understand the history of the region. The museum is maintained in the public interest.
5. DEATFC_120709_152.JPG: Lid from dynamite box found underground at Lila C. Mine
6. DEATFC_120709_172.JPG: THE TWENTY MULE TEAM The twenty mule teams solved a transportation problem: between 1883 and 1888 they hauled more than twelve million pounds of borax from remote and inaccessible Death Valley to the railroad at Mojave. When the Harmony Borax Works was built in 1882, teams of eight and ten mules hauled the ore. But with increased production, the first teams of twenty mules were tried. Stretching out more than a hundred feet from the wagons, the great elongated teams immediately proved a dependable means of transportation. The borax wagons were large and well built. The rear wheels were 7 feet high, the front wheels 5 feet high. Each wheel had a steel tire 8 inches wide and an inch thick. The hubs were 18 inches in diameter and 22 inches long. The spokes were of split oak, the axle-trees were solid steel bars. The wagon beds were 16 feet long and 6 feet deep, and could carry 10 tons of borax. Fully loaded, the wagons, including the water tank, weighed 36.5 tons. The distance to Mojave was 165 miles. Traveling fifteen to eighteen miles a day, it took ten days to make the trip. After leaving the Valley the teams had to cross 100 miles of empty desert, where many of the overnight stops were at dry camps. Water tanks were therefore attached to the wagons, to supply the men and animals between springs. Three men operated these twenty mules teams – in actuality eighteen mules and two horses – the driver who wielded a formidable whip; the teamster, who harnessed and unharnessed the mules, rode one of the horses, and handled the brake of the lead wagon; and the swamper, who rode on the rear wagon, operated its brake on the downgrades, and was chief cook and dishwasher. When borax was discovered in the Calico Mountains early in the 1890's, twenty mule teams hauled the ore from Borate to the railroad at Daggett. Except for the brief interlude when the traction engine "Old Dinah" attempted the job, borax was carried solely by these teams until the Borate & Daggett Railroad was built around 1895. Among those who helped make the teams famous were J.W.S. Perry, PCB superintendent, who organized the first teams and mapped the routes; William Delameter, who constructed the wagons; Ed Stiles, driver of the first team; and teamsters Frank Tilton, Johnny O'Keefe, and "Borax Bill" Parkinson.
7. DEATFC_120709_173.JPG: BORAX Borax changed the history of Death Valley. It brought in an industry; it produced the famous Twenty Mule Teams; and it focused the world's attention on a great new mineral source, which, unlike the ephemeral gold and silver discoveries, was real. There were no "lost" borax mines. The first form of borax to be found in the Valley was white crystalline ulexite called "cottonball", which encrusted the ancient lake bed, Lake Manly. Cottonball of this kind had been found earlier at Columbus Marsh and at Teel's Marsh, in western Nevada. The first man to try to market Death Valley cottonball was an unsuccessful gold prospector named Daunet. In 1875 he could interest no one in his discovery. Fate made him six years too early. In 1881 Aaron Winters, a prospector who lived in Ash Meadows with his wife, Rosie, offered a night's lodging to a stranger, Henry Spiller, who was prospecting through the desert. His hospitality was well rewarded. The stranger spoke of the growing interest in the mineral borax and showed him samples of cottonball. One look told Winters that he saw the same crystals every day, covering acre upon acre of the floor of Death Valley. The next morning, as soon as his visitor had left, he rode off to the Valley, scooped up a bagful of cottonball and rode back to Ash Meadows. The stranger had told him about the test for borax: pour alcohol and sulfuric acid over the ore and ignite it. If it burns green, it's borax. At sundown, Aaron and Rosie tried the test on the bagful of sample: "She burns green, Rosie", shouted Aaron, "We're rich, by God!" And they were. Winters sold the Death Valley acres he had quickly acquired to William T. Coleman, a prominent San Francisco financier for $20,000. Word of the Valley's cottonball quickly spread. Daunet came back in 1882 and set up the Eagle Borax Works, but quit the business when he found that borax could not be processed by simple recrystallization during the intense summer heat. By the time operations could resume in the Fall, the price of borax had fallen and he was never able to make the operation profitable. In 1882 Coleman built the Harmony Borax Works, hiring Chinese laborers to scrape cottonball from the ancient lake bed for $1.50 per day. Finding that summer processing in the Valley was indeed impossible, he built the Amargosa Borax Works near Shoshone, where the summers were cooler. The ruined remains of these three early borax plants still stand in the desert. The borax was hauled to the nearest railroad by the use of Twenty Mule Teams hitched to ponderous wagons. Coleman was producing about 2 million pounds of borax per year from his Death Valley and Amargosa facilities. In 1882 the Lee brothers discovered a new form of borax along Furnace Creek Wash. This new mineral was named colemanite after Coleman. A quartz-like ore, it demanded far more complex mining methods than cottonball, but it was far richer in borax. Coleman added these borax deposits to his holdings but he never developed them. His financial troubles in 1888 closed the Harmony Borax Works, and they never reopened. In 1890 Coleman sold his properties to an energetic and successful borax prospector from Teel's Marsh named Francis Marion "Borax" Smith for $550,000 giving Smith a virtual monopoly on domestic borax production. Smith consolidated these properties with his own to create the Pacific Coast Borax Company.
8. DEATFC_120709_189.JPG: The Twenty Mule Team Wagons The twenty mule teams were not always 20 mules, but usually 18 mules and 2 horses. Experience proved that it was advisable to have a pair of fine strong draft horses as "wheelers" hitched to either side of the wagon tongue. From the tongue stretched a steel chain 120 feet long equipped at proper intervals with spreaders and singletrees for the nine pairs of mules. The lead pair would take its place at the end of this chain, and the other 16 mules would then fall into place. In front of the wheelers came the pointers who worked on the end of the tongue, ahead of them the "sixes," the "eights", the "tens", and so on to the leaders. The driver wielded a whip with a 22 foot lash, but the real guide of the team was the "jerkline" -- a tough rope about one half inch thick which was attached to the bridle of the nigh leader, ran the length of the team back to the driver. This jerkline was the only mean [sic] of communicating order to the lead animals 120 feet away. A steady pull on the rope indicated a left turn; a series of sharp jerks meant a turn to the right. The mules behind the leaders followed instinctively. When rounded a sharp curve, by the time six or seven pairs of animals had turned, tremendous power was being exerted at an angle which could easily pull the wagons off the road. To counteract this, the pointers and sixes were trained to jump over the chain and pull furiously at an angle until the wagons had safely reached the point of the turn.
9. DEATFC_120709_194.JPG: MINERALS OF THE DEATH VALLEY REGION Although the Death Valley region is renowned for its legendary mineral wealth, the richest deposits of gold, silver, and other metals have in actuality occurred far more frequently in men's minds than in the Valley itself. The legend began when the pioneers who struggled out of the Valley in 1849 brought stories of a rich deposit of silver on the mountainside, and of golden bullets used by the Indians. Neither the specific deposit -- the Lost Gunsight Mine -- nor the bullets were ever found, but the imagination of a frontier world was sparked, and prospectors by the hundreds began to come to this region in search of precious metals. Since 1849 they have continued to come, at times by the thousands. Although many deposits of metallic ores have indeed been discovered in the vicinity of the Valley, notably at Darwin, Tecopa, Rhyolite, Goldfield, and Greenwater, most of these deposits were quicky exhausted, following the cycle of boom and bust. Few metallic deposits have been found in the Valley itself, with the exception of limited strikes of gold at the Keene Wonder Mind and at Chloride Cliffs. On the other hand, the Valley's non-metallic ores, like clay, talc, fluourspar, sulfur, perlite, and borates have proven to be of much more importance. The minerals displayed here are examples of both the principal and exotic ores found in the Death Valley area. They are from the collection of Harry P. Gower, Chief Geologist for the Pacific Coast Borax Company for many years and later head of its land department. Mr. Gower was with PCB for more than 40 years: Gower Gulch, a ravine southwest of Zabriskie Point, was named for him. He kindly donated his lifelong collection to the museum in 1954.
10. DEATFC_120709_209.JPG: RAILROADS: "Borax" Smith was not only a mine operator, but a railroad builder as well. He built the Borate & Daggett Railroad to haul ore from his mines in the Calico Mountains to the Sante Fe siding. He modestly named the two engines the Francis and the Marion. As the Calico deposits became depleted, Smith turned to development of the Death Valley deposits. But Smith wanted a more modern and efficient method to transport Death Valley borax to market than the old 20-Mule Teams. He envisioned a railroad that would not only transport borax to the rest of the world, but would service the newly established gold camps at Tonopah and Beatty, with potentially profitable results. In July 1904, Smith formed the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad Company. Mining at the Lila C., one of the colemanite deposits along Furnace Creek Wash, commenced in 1904. But the railroad did not reach the mine until August 1907. For the two preceding months, 20-Mule Teams hauled the waiting ore from the Lila C. to the Zabriskie siding for shipment to market. With the arrival of the railroad, the Lila C. began steady production of 100 tons of borax per year. It was none too soon; the Calico mines closed in October 1907. Smith pushed the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad on to the gold camps at Beatty. Unfortunately, it was the third railroad to reach the area, and the boom times had already passed. The profits he had envisioned never materialized. Smith resigned his position with Pacific Coast Borax in November 1914. As the Lila C. approached deletion in 1914, the company began to open other deposits in the Funeral Mountains: the Biddy McCarthy, the Played Out, the Grand View, the Lizzie V. Oakey, and the Widow. All the buildings from the camp at the Lila C. were moved and the new camp of Ryan was constructed. The Death Valley Railroad was constructed to link the mine to the Tonopah & Tidewater RR at Death Valley Junction. "Baby gauge" lines connected the smaller mines to the Biddy McCarthy. The combined mines produced 200 tons of borax per year. In 1926, a large deposit of borax was discovered farther south in the Mojave Desert. It proved to be so rich that the mines in Death Valley were closed in October 1927. The demise of mining in the area did not immediately spell the end of the railroad. Frank Jenifer, manager of the T&T Railroad envisioned Death Valley as an ideal location for a desert resort. Late in 1925, he had convinced Pacific Coast Borax to build an Inn at their Furnace Creek property, and made a deal with Union Pacific Railroad to jointly promote train tours to the valley. The Furnace Creek Inn was just barely completed when the first Union Pacific tour arrived February 1, 1927. Visitors arrived by rail at Ryan, and then were driven down to the Inn in a big seven-passenger open touring car. When the mines at Ryan closed, the mine dormitories were converted into the Death Valley View Hotel, and the mine facilities at Death Valley Junction became the Amargosa Hotel.
11. DEATFC_120709_217.JPG: The 49er Pioneers: Not design, but an accident of fate, led to the discovery of Death Valley. Late in 1849 a party of gold-seekers, bound for California mines, stumbled into the Valley. Three died in their frantic efforts to escape and the rest barely made it through alive. Many years later, William Lewis Manly, a heroic participant in this hazardous adventure, told the story in his moving book, Death Valley in '49. Manly's own words are used in this exhibit. These emigrants had come from all parts of the east in ox-drawn wagons loaded with wives and children, mining equipment, and household goods. By the time they reached Salt Lake City, it was already late fall and knowledge of the Donner Party's snowbound fate in the Sierras three years earlier filled them with dread. At Brigham Young's advice they joined a party headed for California by a southern route. The expedition was led by Jefferson Hunt. Somewhere in what is now southern Utah, about a hundred wagons separated from the Hunt party to follow Orson Smith to a reported short cut to the gold mines. All but two dozen wagons returned to follow Hunt after a few days. The remainder struck out blindly into unknown and desolate country. They soon formed several small independent groups which travelled loosely together: the Jayhawkers, some three dozen men from Illinois; the Bugsmashers, about a dozen men from Mississippi and Georgia; and the families of Asabel Bennett, John Arcane, Harry Wade and Rev. James W. Brier, and a few other solitary men. In all more than eighty men, women, and eleven children braved Death Valley in the fall of 1849. Hardships were severe almost from the begining [sic]. Water was agonizingly scarce. The desolate countryside provided little grass for the animals to eat. Rugged terrain made the journey slow and difficult, and the wagons that could not be dragged through the mountain passes, were abandoned with their cargo. The starving oxen were slaughtered for food, and their flesh smoked for preservation by burning the useless wagons. The families were in constant fear of Indians. On Christmas day, the exhausted men and women struggled into this valley. They had been on the road for many months, but they were still hundreds of miles from the gold fields. They were sick and desperate. With sinking hearts, they looked across the glistening alkali flats toward the seemingly impassable barrier of the Panamint Mountains. Many of them felt that they could go no farther. It was William Lewis Manly who saved the Bennett-Arcane party from probably death in the desert. With one companion, an ox-driver named John Rogers, the 29-year-old Manly left the emigrants in a cheerless camp on the Valley floor, somewhere in the neighborhood of what is now the Tule Springs-Eagle Borax Works area, to seek outside aid. Although the Jayhawkers and other groups ultimately abandoned their wagons, and finally managed to reach California settlements on foot, the Bennetts and Arcanes were temporarily immobilized by sick young children and exhausted women. Their lives depended upon Manly. He did not fail them. With Rogers, he crossed the Panamint and Argus Ranges and walked across the wastes of the Mojave Desert to a ranch at San Francisquito, near Los Angeles. There without pausing to rest, the two gathered up supplies for the stricken families. Less honorable men might have abandoned the emigrants and thus saved themselves the arduous journey back and forth across the desert: Manly and Rogers, however, started off at once, with one small white mule, and three horses which died along the way. Still at their camp, the Bennetts and Arcanes had managed to survive the long wait; with renewed hope they were able to follow Manly again on the long and difficult journey to Los Angeles. These pioneers had accidentally enlarged the American frontier by discovering a valley which was to be known for its many extremes. But not until long afterwards were any of them aware of this. At the time of their rescue, their discovery seemed of minor importance. Uppermost in their minds was the remarkable fact that they were alive to say "goodbye to Death Valley."
12. DEATFC_120709_228.JPG: Belt lacing machine for leather or canvas
13. DEATFC_120709_232.JPG: Belt lacing machine for leather or canvas
14. DEATFC_120709_240.JPG: FURNACE CREEK INN and RANCH: The idea to promote tourism in Death Valley began with Borax Smith, but it was Tonapah & Tidewater Railroad manager, Frank Jenifer, who transformed the idea into reality. He saw Death Valley as a place of beauty and solitude, mystery and wonder that would appeal to tourists looking for someplace [sic] out of the ordinary. If Palm Springs could become a popular desert resort, why not Death Valley? Jenifer convinced Pacific Coast Borax to build a hotel on its Death Valley property. Renowned Los Angeles architect, Albert C. Martin, was hired to draw up plans for an impressive, mission-style structure. A low ridge overlooking Furnace Creek Wash near the site of ancient Native American ceremonial grounds was selected. The spot afforded a magnificent view of the Panamint Mountains rising to the west, and a plentiful supply of water was available from Texas and Travertine Springs. In the early fall of 1926, a crew of Paiute and Shoshone laborers began making the adobe bricks needed for the project from soil found around Furnace Creek Ranch, and the day after Thanksgiving, construction began on the Furnace Creek Inn. A Spanish stonemason from Madrid, Steve Esteves, was hired to create the Moorish-style stonework and retaining walls of the Inn, much of it done with indiginous [sic] rock. The lobby, dining room, kitchen and the first dozen rooms were just barely completed when the first railroad sponsored tour arrived February 1, 1927. The Inn was expanded and refined year by year. The Terrace Wing added twenty-two rooms in 1928. Tennis courts and a warm, spring-fed swimming pool was constructed in 1929 complete with portico views of the valley below. A nine-hole golf course and an airfield were constructed in 1929. When the North Wing was built in 1930, it added another twenty rooms of capacity to the Inn. In 1934 the gardens were planted with their fan and date palm trees. The lower Lounge, since renamed the Marquez Room in honor of long-time resident Chef Marquez, was built that same year. All of the guests' rooms contained a fireplace for heating. In 1935 the Central Tower unit was built, and steam heat was installed in all the rooms. The massive timbers used in the 1937 excavation and construction of the Oasis Room, directly beneath the Inn Dining Room, were brought in from a dismantled trestle of the defunct Death Valley Railroad. The Barse Miller fresco of combative rams which graces the fountain wall of the Lounge was conceived from a story, told by Frank Jenifer. In 1938 a garage was constructed, and two years later a service station was added to service the increasing motor traffic into Death Valley. This completed construction of the Inn resort complex. Furnace Creek Ranch was constructed at the site of the old Greenland Ranch. In 1924-25 PCB had planted 1500 date palm trees on the land around the ranch, which had earlier served to provide fresh produce to the Harmony Borax miners, and earlier yet to the local Native Americans. Construction of the Ranch resort was begun in 1933. All of the Boulder Cottages were purchased from the Hoover Dam construction crews and moved to the site. Additional old wood and corrugated metal cabins were relocated from the old Gerstley Mine near Shosone. The rest of the cabins were constructed between 1935 and 1939. The lobby, store and dining room were built in 1934-35. The recreation hall was erected in 1936, and an enlarged kitchen was completed in 1952, as well as a new swimming pool. In 1956, Fred Harvey Inc. took over management of the Furnace Creek Resort, and in 1969 the company purchased the facilities from U.S. Borax.
15. DEATFC_120709_255.JPG: SOME EVENTS In 1861 the first U.S. Boundary Commission came to the valley, complete with twenty-four mules and three camels as beasts of burden. The Commission was not affirmatively impressed: they called the Valley "a vast and deep pit, of many gloomy wonders..." As word of the "gloomy wonders" got around, men seeking scientific information began to come to the Valley, among them H.G. Blasdell, first governor of Nevada, who led a mineralogical expedition in 1866. The following year the Army sent its first military expedition to explore the region, under the leadership of Lt. C.E. Bendire. The first reliable and detailed maps of Death Valley were made by Lt. George Wheeler of the army Engineering Corps. The natural history of Death Valley was recorded in several now classic reports written by the Biological Survey Expedition of the Department of Agriculture in 1891. This expedition was led by C. Hart Merriam and included zoologists Vernon Bailey, Basil Dutcher and Edward W. Nelson, ornithologists Albert K. Fisher and Theodore S. Palmer, and entimologist Albert Koebele, botanist Frederick V. Coville and Frederick Funston and naturalist Frank Stephens. Their work remains the definitive source of information on Death Valley flora, fauna, and ethnology. During that summer a temporary weather station was established at Furnace Creek Ranch, then called Greenland. The maximum temperature recorded that summer was only 122 degrees Fahrenheit, leaving the Salton Sink with the record high temperature for the country. A permanent weather station was not established until 1911, and in 1913 Death Valley captured the national record with a high temperature of 134 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10.
16. DEATFC_120709_259.JPG: Blasting cap tin. California Cap Co., San Francisco
17. DEATFC_120709_262.JPG: THE PROSPECTORS The pioneers who had accidentally stumbled into Death Valley carried more than their story of their sufferings to the settlements of California: one of them brought tangible evidence that precious metals could be found there. While searching for a way out of the Valley, Jim Martin, a member of the Bugsmashers group, pocketed a piece of shining metal from a sparkling ledge. The Georgians recognized that the rock was rich silver ore. Martin had knocked the sight off his rifle earlier on the journey and when he reached Mariposa in the gold fields, he took the piece of metal to a gunsmith to replace his gunsight. The story quickly spread of the mountain of silver crossed by Martin and his party on their way to California, and it touched off one of the west's great prospecting booms. The sparkling ledge with the pure silver outcroppings was never found again, or perhaps was worked out and never recognized as such. But the Lost Gunsight Mine beckoned to prospectors decade after decade. Martin himself came back to Death Valley to look for it in 1862. The earliest desert prospectors found few minerals but left place names and some legends behind them. Darwin was named for a disappointed miner named Darwin French. A Dr. Samuel George, of the Rough and Ready Mining Co. discovered antimony at Wildrose Canyon on Christmas Day 1860 and called it the Christmas Gift Mine. A prospector named Charles C. Breyfogle after being lost from his prospecting party for several days, returned from the Valley with rich gold ore in his hands and no memory of where he had discovered it. Thus, the Lost Breyfogle Mine was added to the lore and the lure of the region. From the 1860's until well into the twentieth century, prospectors wandered over the desert with pick, shovel, canteen and the long-suffering burro. Although no deposit compared with the fabulous Comstock Lode in Virginia City, they found silver in the Panamints, silver and lead at Darwin, gold and silver at Keeler and in the Calicos. At the turn of the century, gold discoveries skyrocketed Tonopah, Goldfield, Bullfrog, and Skidoo into the boom towns. Rhyolite's gold brought three railroads, electricity, telephones, newspapers, banks, a business district with three-story skyscrapers named Golden Street, and a population of 4000 by 1907. During the flush days, everything was ordered by the carload. But by 1910, the census takers found just 611 souls in Rhyolite. The post office closed in 1913 and the power company turned off the lights in 1916. Gold was found in Harrisburg, first called Harrisberry after Shorty Harris and Pete Aguerreberry who made the strike. Gold was also found near Emigrant Canyon at what became the Skidoo Mine, developed by bob Montgomery who had discovered the biggest mine in Rhyolite. In the valley itself there were smaller scale gold strikes at the Keane Wonder Mine and in Chloride Cliffs. Greenwater was one of the great stock mining scams of all time. Out of a few green stains of copper sprang saloons, dance halls, two newspapers, a bank, a post office, and telephone service – all the trappings of a mining boom town except the ore in the ground to pay for it! Similarly, Leadfield's wealth was only in the stock which a few small veins of lead and silver inspired promoters to issue. Like most of its neighbors, it is a ghost town today. The prospectors who worked the Death Valley region have been as colorful as the towns that shot up around their discoveries. They were independent, adventurous, and sometimes lucky. Some of the ones who have enriched our history, if not themselves, include Shorty Narris, John Lemoigne, Johnny Mills, Shorty Borden, Jack Madison, Paddy Miles, Bob Thompson, Bill Maddick, Johnny-behind-the-gun-Cyte and, of course, Death Valley Scotty.
18. DEATFC_120709_282.JPG: USES OF BORAX Many people remember the advertisements for 20 Mule Team Borax detergent, and the Death Valley Days radio and later television program it sponsored. But borax products touch our lives in many ways that few people realize. Glass and ceramic products consumed 62% of the borax produced in 1992. Small quantities of borax impart clarity and brilliance to glass, while larger quantities instill heat resistance, creating products like pyrex glass. Fiberglass for bodymolding, tire belting, and insulation material is another major consumer of borax. Borax has been used for centuries in ceramic glazes and enamels. About 9% of the domestic borax produced becomes soaps and detergents. Its antiseptic qualities make it a good disinfectant and preservative, and it inhibits the growth of mold, mildew, and fungus. Dilute quantities of boron acts like a fertilized to plants, but concentrated doses are toxic and can be applied as a herbicide. Borax is a critical constituent in the reduction of some metallic ores, and it acts as a fluxing agent during brazing, welding, and soldering operations. Borax gives certain building materials fire retardance. It is an ingrediant [sic] in some cosmetics, in a gasoline addative [sic], and in automotive antifreeze solutions. Boron and aluminum carbide alloys are used as shields in nuclear reactors, and it creates a high temperature abrasive when alloyed with steel. The United States produced $300 million worth of borax in 1992, more than any other nation on earth. About half of that production was exported. The US holds about one third of the world's known reserves of borates, and these resources lie within the California desert. Borax deposits still exist in Death Valley, but the National Park designation of this area prohibits the future development of these resources.
19. DEATFC_120709_290.JPG: Ronald Reagan was one of the hosts of the Deth Valley Days television program. Do you know the others? [Answer: Stanley Andrews 1952-1965, Ronald Reagan 1965-1966, Robert Taylor 1966-1969, Dale Robertson 1969-1972]
20. DEATFC_120709_386.JPG: This 60 ton oil burning Baldwin 280 Locomotive hauled borate ore from the mines at Ryan to the mill and main line railroad at Death Valley Junction from 1916 until the railroad was abandoned in 1931. At that time it was sent to the United States Potash Co. in Carlsbad NM where it carried ore from mine to refinery for 25 years. In 1956 it was given to this Museum by the United States Potash Co. , now a division of the United States Borax & Chemical Corporation.
21. DEATFC_120709_502.JPG: 20 Mule Team Wagon Train 1885 Used in hauling borax from Death Valley to Mojave, 165 miles - 10 days. The borax weighed 24 tons. The entire weight totaled 36-1/2 tons. Furnace Creek Resort Death Valley, California, USA
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Wikipedia Description: Death Valley National Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley. The park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons and mountains. Death Valley is the largest national park in the contiguous United States, as well as the hottest, driest and lowest of all the national parks in the United States. It contains Badwater Basin, the second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere and lowest in North America at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. More than 93% of the park is a designated wilderness area. The park is home to many species of plants and animals that have adapted to this harsh desert environment including creosote bush, Joshua tree, bighorn sheep, coyote, and the endangered Death Valley pupfish, a survivor from much wetter times. UNESCO included Death Valley as the principal feature of its Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve in 1984.

A series of Native American groups inhabited the area from as early as 7000 BC, most recently the Timbisha around 1000 AD who migrated between winter camps in the valleys and summer grounds in the mountains. A group of European Americans, trapped in the valley in 1849 while looking for a shortcut to the gold fields of California, gave the valley its name, even though only one of their group died there. Several short-lived boom towns sprang up during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to mine gold and silver. The only long-term profitable ore to be mined was borax, which was transported out of the valley with twenty-mule teams. The valley later became the subject of books, radio programs, television series, and movies. Tourism expanded in the 1920s when resorts were built around Stovepipe Wells and Furnace Creek. Death Valley National Monument was declared in 1933 and the park was substantially expanded and became a national park in 1994.

The natural environment of the area has been shaped largely by its geology. The valley is actually a graben with the oldest rocks being extensively metamorphosed and at least 1.7 billion years old. Ancient, warm, shallow seas deposited marine sediments until rifting opened the Pacific Ocean. Additional sedimentation occurred until a subduction zone formed off the coast. The subduction uplifted the region out of the sea and created a line of volcanoes. Later the crust started to pull apart, creating the current Basin and Range landform. Valleys filled with sediment and, during the wet times of glacial periods, with lakes, such as Lake Manly.

Death Valley is the fifth-largest American national park and the largest in the contiguous United States. It is also larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined, and nearly as large as Puerto Rico. In 2013, Death Valley National Park was designated as a dark sky park by the International Dark-Sky Association.
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