20 Mule Team Days in Death Valley

By Harold O. Weight

“The saga of the great mule teams and giant wagons that are today’s romantic symbol of Death Valley began long before the first muleskinner piloted his lumbering borax freighters out of the Big Sink. Its roots were in that night when Aaron and Rosie Winters crouched in their darkened camp at Furnace Creek and read their future in the green-flickering flame of burning borax. But its seed went farther back.”

First published in 1955, this is a wonderful book on the mule team days in California’s Death Valley during the 19th century. It contains observations on the natural history of mules and muleskinners, and the mining of desert borax. There is also a reprint of Henry G. Hanks’ Report on Death Valley from 1883.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Borodino Books
• Release date: Feb 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789120240

Harold O. Weight

Harold O. Weight was an American author and magazine editor. Formerly a staff editor at Desert Magazine, together with Lucile Weight, in November 1950 the duo became the principal editors of Calico Print, a monthly (later bi-monthly) periodical of the mid-20th century, containing tales and trails of the desert west. The Calico Print was discontinued at the end of 1953, and the Weights concentrated on writing books on desert history, including: Lost Mines of Death Valley (1953); Twenty Mule Team Days in Death Valley (1955); Rhyolite, Lost Ship of the Desert (1959); The Ghost City of Golden Dreams (1959); Lost Mines of Old Arizona (1959); and Greenwater (1969).

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Text originally published in 1955 under the same title.

© Borodino Books 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

TWENTY MULE TEAM DAYS IN DEATH VALLEY

With Some Observations on The Natural History of Mules and Muleskinners, and the Mining of Desert Borax, and a Reprint of Henry G. Hanks' Report on Death Valley, 1883

BY

HAROLD O. WEIGHT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

1—WHITE TREASURE 6

2—THE LONE ROAD TO MOJAVE 10

3—WAGONS TO HAUL THROUGH HELL 13

4—GOD MADE MULES A-PURPOSE! 17

HISTORY—DEATH VALLEY AND ITS BORAX by HENRY G. HANKS 20

From Borax Deposits of California and Nevada, Third Annual Report of the State Mineralogist of California, 1883 20

5—THE LONE LINE SKINNERS 28

6—TALES OF TWENTY MULE DAYS 36

7—THE CHEAT DAYS END 40

8—DEATH VALLEY’S "TRADEMARK’ 44

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 50

1—WHITE TREASURE

The saga of the great mule teams and giant wagons that are today’s romantic symbol of Death Valley began long before the first muleskinner piloted his lumbering borax freighters out of the Big Sink. Its roots were in that night when Aaron and Rosie Winters crouched in their darkened camp at Furnace Creek and read their future in the green-flickering flame of burning borax. But its seed went farther back.

When the emigrants of 1849 escaped, hungry and afoot, from the harsh dry talons of Death Valley, they advised anyone willing to listen that they had found the dregs of creation. There might or might not be silver in the mountains west of the valley, as some claimed. But Death Valley was only a horrid, worthless sink of salt and saleratus.

Prospectors who backtracked the Fortyniners, seeking possible substance in that yarn of a silver bonanza, agreed. Death Valley was just a big, no good bed of alkali.

Neither estimate was mineralogically accurate.

There were more components than salt and soda in that grim below-sea-level sink. Borax, for instance. Some Fortyniners seeking escape from Death Valley had trudged right over a rich borax deposit. Of course, no one knew then that borax existed in the United States. Not until 1856 did John A. Veatch discover it in a spring in Tehama County. Not until 1864 did W. C. Ayres produce it commercially at Clear Lake, California. When he did, the price of borax fell from 50¢ to 30¢ a pound.

Still—that was $600 a ton! Prospectors recalled chemical flats and playas they had seen in California and Nevada deserts. Could they hold borax, too? They could! In 1871 William Troup found ulexite—the silky cotton ball borax ore of desert marshes—at Salt Wells and Columbus Marsh, Nevada. Within a year a company financed by William T. Coleman of San Francisco was gathering and refining ulexite at Columbus. The same year Francis Marion Smith—later famous as Borax Smith—made an even more important strike at nearby Teels Marsh.

John and Dennis Searles had been mining for years down in the Slate Range—one range west from the Panamints—when in 1873 a visitor brought news of the borax excitement and samples of borax. John Searles thought they looked like the stuff he had found in the big flat southwest of the Slates nearly ten years before. He, his brother, and friends went down to the marsh and filed a lot of claims. Searles was right. Soon Borax Lake was producing. Today, known as Searles Lake, it still is producing a variety of chemicals at Trona.

The borax rush sent prospectors even into Death Valley. The Inyo Independent, May 10, 1873, announced two big borax strikes in the valley. The finds must have been real, for borax was later worked at one location specified: the immediate vicinity of the spot where those 1849 emigrants abandoned their wagons. But no development was done, so the official discovery of borax in Death Valley had to await 1880 and Aaron Winters.

The story of Aaron and his wife, Rosie, was told first—and best—by John R. Spears in Illustrated Sketches of Death Valley, 1892, long out of print. The Winters lived primitively in a stone house at Ash Meadows, eastward over the Funeral Range from Death Valley. From a prospector staying overnight, Aaron learned about borax and how to test for it with