Aaron and Rosie Winters
While Bellerin’ Teck was selling half interests in the spectacular hills
to the unwary, he actually walked over a treasure of more millions than
his wildest dreams had conjured.
Teck’s nearest neighbor lived at Ash Meadows about 60 miles east of the
valley.
Ash Meadows is a flat desert area in Nevada along the California border.
With several water holes, subterranean streams, and abundant wild grass
it was a resting place for early emigrants and a hole-in for
prospectors. It was also an ideal refuge for gentlemen who liked its
distance from sheriffs and the ease with which approaching horsemen
could be seen from nearby hills.
Lacking was woman. The male needed the female but there wasn’t a white
woman in the country. So he took what the market afforded—a squaw and
not infrequently two or three. “He’s my son all right,” a patriarch once
informed me, “but it’s been so long I don’t exactly recollect which of
them squaws was his mother.”
Usually the wife was bought. Sometimes for a trinket. Often a horse.
Among the trappers who first blazed the trails to the West, 30 beaver
skins were considered a fair price for an able bodied squaw. She was
capable in rendering domestic service and loyal in love. Too often the
consort’s fidelity was transient.
“For 20 years,” said the noted trapper, Killbuck, “I packed a squaw
along—not one, but a many. First I had a Blackfoot—the darndest slut as
ever cried for fo-farrow. I lodge-poled her on Coulter’s Creek ... as
good as four packs of beaver I gave for old Bull-tail’s daughter. He was
the head chief of the Ricaree. Thar wan’t enough scarlet cloth nor beads
... in Sublette’s packs for her ... I sold her to Cross-Eagle for one of
Jake Hawkins’ guns.... Then I tried the Sioux, the Shian (Cheyenne) and
a Digger from the other side, who made the best moccasins as ever I
wore.”
So Aaron Winters chose his mate from the available supply and with
Rosie, part Mexican and Indian, part Spanish, he settled in Ash Meadows
in a dugout. In front and adjoining had been added a shack, part wood,
part stone. The floors were dirt. Rosie dragged in posts, poles, and
brush and made a shed. Aaron found time between hunting and trapping to
add a room of unmortared stone. At times there was no money, but piñon
nuts grew in the mountains, desert tea and squaw cabbage were handy and
the beans of mesquite could be ground into flour.
Rosie, to whom one must yield admiration, was not the first woman in
Winters’ life. “He liked his women,” Ed Stiles recalled, “and changed
’em often.” But to Rosie, Aaron Winters was always devoted. Her material
reward was little but all who knew her praised her beauty and her
virtues.
One day when dusk was gathering there was a rap on the sagging slab door
and Rosie Winters opened it on an angel unawares. The Winters invited
the stranger in, shared their meager meal. After supper they sat up
later than usual, listening to the story of the stranger’s travels. He
was looking for borax, he told them. “It’s a white stuff....” At this
time, only two or three unimportant deposits of borax were known to
exist in America and the average prospector knew nothing about it.
The first borax was mined in Tibet. There in the form of tincal it was
loaded on the backs of sheep, transported across the Himalayas and
shipped to London. It was so rare that it was sold by the ounce. Later
the more intelligent of the western prospectors began to learn that
borax was something to keep in mind.
To Aaron Winters it was just something bought in a drug store, but Rosie
was interested in the “white stuff.” She wanted to know how one could
tell when the white stuff was borax. Patiently the guest explained how
to make the tests: “Under the torch it will burn green....”
Finally Rosie made a bed for the wayfarer in the lean-to and long after
he blew out his candle Rosie Winters lay awake, wondering about some
white stuff she’d seen scattered over a flat down in the hellish heat of
Death Valley. She remembered that it whitened the crust of a big area,
stuck to her shoes and clothes and got in her hair when the wind lifted
the silt.
The next morning Rosie and Aaron bade the guest good luck and goodbye
and he went into the horizon without even leaving his name. Then Rosie
turned to Aaron: “Maybe,” she said ... “maybe that white stuff we see
that time below Furnace Creek—maybe that is borax.”
“Might be,” Aaron answered.
“Why don’t we go see?” Rosie asked. “Maybe some Big Horn sheep—” Rosie
knew her man and Aaron Winters got his rifle and Rosie packed the
sow-belly and beans.
It was a long, gruelling trip down into the valley under a Death Valley
sun but hope sustained them. They made their camp at Furnace Creek, then
Rosie led Aaron over the flats she remembered. She scooped up some of
the white stuff that looked like cotton balls while Aaron prepared for
the test. Then the brief, uncertain moment when the white stuff touched
the flame. Tensely they watched, Aaron grimly curious rather than
hopeful; Rosie with pounding heart and lips whispering a prayer.
Then, miracle of miracles—the green flame. They looked excitedly into
each other’s eyes, each unable to believe. In that moment, Rosie, always
devout, lifted her eyes to heaven and thanked her God. Neither had any
idea of the worth of their find. Vaguely they knew it meant spending
money. A new what-not for Rosie’s mantel. Perhaps pine boards to cover
the hovel’s dirt floor; maybe a few pieces of golden oak furniture; a
rifle with greater range than Aaron’s old one; silk or satin to make a
dress for Rosie.
“Writers have had to draw on their imagination for what happened,” a
descendant of the Winters once told me. “They say Uncle Aaron exclaimed,
‘Rosie, she burns green!’ or ‘Rosie, we’re rich!’ but Aunt Rosie said
they were so excited they couldn’t remember, but she knew what they did!
They went over to the ditch that Bellerin’ Teck had dug to water the
ranch and in its warm water soaked their bunioned feet.”
Returning to Ash Meadows they faced the problem of what to do with the
“white stuff.” Unlike gold, it couldn’t be sold on sight, because it was
a new industry, and little was known about its handling. Finally Aaron
learned that a rich merchant in San Francisco, named Coleman was
interested in borax in a small way and lost no time in sending samples
to Coleman.
W. T. Coleman was a Kentucky aristocrat who had come to California
during the gold rush and attained both fortune and the affection of the
people of the state. He had been chosen leader of the famed Vigilantes,
who had rescued San Francisco from a gang of the lawless as tough as the
world ever saw.
Actually Coleman’s interest in borax was a minor incident in the
handling of his large fortune and his passionate devotion to the
development of his adopted state. For that reason alone, Coleman had
become interested in the small deposits of borax discovered by Francis
Smith, first at Columbus Marsh.
Smith had been a prospector before coming to California, wandering all
over western country, looking for gold and silver. He was one of those
who had heard that borax was worth keeping in mind.
Reaching Nevada and needing a grubstake, he began to cut wood to supply
mines around Columbus, Aurora, and Candelaria. On Teel’s Marsh he found
a large growth of mesquite, built a shack and claimed all the wood and
the site as his own. Upon a portion of it, some Mexicans had cut and
corded some of the wood and Smith refused to let them haul it off. They
left grudgingly and with threats to return. The Mexicans, of course, had
as much right to the wood as Smith.
Sensing trouble and having no weapons at his camp, he went twelve miles
to borrow a rifle. But there were no cartridges and he had to ride sixty
miles over the mountains to Aurora where he found only four. Returning
to his shack, he found the Mexicans had also returned with
reinforcements. Twenty-four were now at work and their mood was
murderous. Smith had a companion whose courage he didn’t trust and
ordered him to go out in the brush and keep out of the way.
The Mexicans told Smith they were going to take the wood. Smith warned
that he would kill the first man who touched the pile. With only four
cartridges to kill 20 men, it was obviously a bluff. One of the Mexicans
went to the pile and picked up a stick. Smith put his rifle to his
shoulder and ordered the fellow to drop it. Unafraid and still holding
the stick the Mexican said: “You may kill me, but my friends will kill
you. Put your rifle down and we will talk it over.”
They had cut additional wood during his absence and demanded that they
be permitted to take all the wood they had cut. Smith consented and when
the Mexicans had gone he staked out the marsh as a mining claim—which
led to the connection with Coleman.
Upon receipt of Winters’ letter, Coleman forwarded it to Smith and asked
him to investigate the Winters claim. Smith’s report was enthusiastic.
Coleman then sent two capable men, William Robertson and Rudolph
Neuenschwander to look over the Winters discovery, with credentials to
buy. Again Rosie and Aaron Winters heard the flutter of angel wings at
the hovel door. This time the angels left $20,000. Rarely in this world
has buyer bought so much for so little, but to Aaron and Rosie Winters
it was all the money in the world.
Despite the troubles of operating in a place so remote from market and
with problems of a product about which too little was known, borax was
soon adding $100,000 a year to Coleman’s already fabulous fortune.
Francis M. (Borax) Smith was put in charge of operations under the firm
name of Coleman and Smith.
Freed from the sordid squalor of the Ash Meadows hovel, the Winters
bought the Pahrump Ranch, a landmark of Pahrump Valley, and settled down
to watch the world go by.
Thus began the Pacific Coast Borax Company, one of the world’s
outstanding corporations. Later Smith was to become president of the
Pacific Coast Borax Company and later still, he was to head a three
hundred million dollar corporation for the development of the San
Francisco and Oakland areas and then face bankruptcy and ruin.
Overlooking the site where Rosie and Aaron made the discovery, now
stands the magnificent Furnace Creek Inn.
One day while sitting on the hotel terrace, I noticed a plane discharge
a group of the Company’s English owners and their guests. Meticulously
dressed, they paid scant attention to the desolation about and hastened
to the cooling refuge of their caravansary. At dinner they sat down to
buttered mignon and as they talked casually of the races at Ascot and
the ball at Buckingham Palace, I looked out over that whitehot slab of
hell and thought of Rosie and Aaron Winters trudging with calloused feet
behind a burro—their dinner, sow-belly and beans.