DESERT BORAX MINES
In the most desolate, dangerous, and terrifying locality in the United
States, if not in the whole world, lie the largest known deposits of
borax in the universe. Death Valley is the repository of more mineral
wealth than has ever been brought out of the Klondike, but Death stands
guard over the hoards of gold, silver, copper, salt, niter, borax, and
precious stones known to abound there.
Every year prospectors brave the terrors of the desert and enter the
dread portals of the gateway to the valley. This gateway is through a
range of mountains to which have been given the most appropriate name
of Funeral Mountains. Every year new tragedies are enacted in the
valley and new graves are made under the shadow of these mountains, or
else the victims, finding no grave, lie upon the burning sands and
stare with sightless eyes at the mountains which bound the valley.
[Illustration: A TRACTION ENGINE HAULING BORAX FROM DEATH VALLEY
From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]
Where fortunes are to be made lives are held cheap, and natures great
deposits of wealth in the valley have tempted man to pit his ingenuity,
strength, and endurance against the powers of the great destroyer.
In the United States the supply of borax is limited to the States of
California, Oregon, and Nevada. Until within the last ten or twelve
years the supply of borax in this country was derived from evaporating
the water of Clear Lake and several alkaline marshes in California and
Nevada. In 1890, it was discovered that the crust of borax which formed
in such places was but a secondary deposit from the main body of the
mineral drug stored below. Then began the real history of the borax
industry in this country.
It is said that borax is never found in nature except in craters of
extinct volcanoes. Be that as it may, certain it is that in California
all the deposits yet discovered lie at the bottom of those bowl-shaped
valleys which are known to have been once the outlet for the vomitings
of prehistoric Pélées.
The presence of borax is indicated by the snowy appearance of the
valley bottoms, and to the uninitiated these white stretches, when seen
from a little distance, might well be mistaken for snow-fields. Many a
life has been lost in attempting to cross these snowy plains, for
beneath the thin shell of salts lie fathomless depths of poisonous
waters, for the funnels of those extinct volcanoes are filled with
solutions of a multitude of mineral drugs such as were never brewed in
chemist's laboratory.
In Death Valley thirty thousand acres of borax, niter, soda, and salt
deposits have been located. The valley is literally a vast chemical
laboratory where Nature has compounded and stored drugs by the millions
of tons. It is the drug store of the universe.
There are several different forms in which borax occurs in nature. It
is found in solution in some of the lakes and pools, from which it is
obtained by evaporation; in salts or crystals known as boreat, which
require no other treatment than to be dissolved in vats of boiling
water and then allowed to crystallize again, and it is found in the
form of "cotton balls," as the round masses of ulexite are called,
masses varying in size from a rifle-ball to a bushel basket. The finest
borax on the market is made from the "cotton balls." These balls, when
broken, are fibrous and woolly in appearance, hence the name.
[Illustration: THE PAINTED DESERT
From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]
When it was discovered that the real deposits of borax lie beneath the
surface deposits, a genuine borax mine was located and developed at
what is now known as Boreat, twelve miles north of Daggett, on the line
of the Santa Fé railroad, where the reduction works are situated. The
wonderful richness of this deposit has led to further explorations, and
the remarkable finds in Death Valley have resulted.
When brought to the works at Daggett, the lumps of borax are fed into
the mammoth iron jaws of a crusher which breaks them into lumps of an
uniform size about the bigness of the average chestnut. These lumps are
fed to the grinder, which reduces them to powder, and the powder, in
turn, is passed through rollers like those used in the manufacture of
the finest grades of wheat flour. From these rollers it comes forth as
fine as the product of the wheat from which our most choice bread is
made. Then it is mixed with carbonate of soda, which is mined in Death
Valley, and the mixture is thrown into vats of boiling water and
agitated by means of revolving wheels till the mass is dissolved and
thoroughly mixed. From this compound are precipitated two powders, one
the borax of commerce, the other the well-known product styled sal
soda.
Borax from Death Valley first entered the markets about twenty years
ago. It was mined from deposits found in the Calico Mountains and from
one or two sinks in the valley, and it was hauled out of the valley and
one hundred miles across the desert in wagons drawn by mule teams of
from eighteen to thirty-two mules each.
During the five or six years following the opening of the mines, large
quantities of borax were taken out and placed upon the market. Then, in
the spring of 1888, the mines were closed because it was impossible to
find men to work the mines or drive the mules. It became known that few
men who went into the mines came out alive. At the end of six or seven
months the miner succumbed to the terrific heat and the poisonous
atmosphere, or else he was a broken-down invalid incapable of doing
further work. It came to be considered simply a form of suicide to
engage in the work, consequently the mine-owners were unable to
continue operations.
[Illustration: A MONUMENT IN THE LAND OF THIRST
From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]
The desert borax wagons are a marvel of themselves. The wagon proper is
made to hold ten tons of borax. It has a bed sixteen feet long by four
feet wide and sides six feet high. The hind wheels are seven feet, and
the front wheels five feet, in diameter. They are fitted with tires
eight inches wide and an inch thick, and an empty wagon weighs
seventy-eight hundred pounds. In addition to this combined weight of
wagon and load, amounting to about fourteen tons, is the trailer, as is
called the water wagon, which it is necessary to attach to the train in
order that man and beast may not perish of thirst on the journey.
Altogether, the plucky teams have to haul through the yielding sands
about twenty tons--nearly or quite one ton to the beast.
A traction engine is also employed in hauling the product of the mines.
This is a huge concern weighing hundreds of tons and doing the work of
several mule teams. This machine has not been found adapted to all
features of the work, however, and is not destined to supersede the
mule wagons.
A little more than twenty years ago borax was worth, in this country,
in the neighborhood of one dollar per pound. It is now being
mined,--even under the present disadvantages,--prepared, and marketed
at a profit at about ten cents a pound, with a prospect of still lower
figures in the near future.