Explore Death Valley's Rich History

Boom and bust

The ores that are most famously associated with the area were also the easiest to collect (and most profitable): evaporite deposits such as salts, borate, and talc. Borax was found by Rosie and Aaron Winters near Furnace Creek Ranch (then called Greenland) in 1881. Later that same year the Eagle Borax Works became Death Valley's first commercial borax operation. William Tell Coleman built the Harmony Borax Works plant and began to process ore in late 1883 or early 1884 until 1888. This mining and smelting company produced borax to make soap and for industrial uses. The end product was shipped out of the valley 165 miles (265 km) to the Mojave railhead in 10-ton-capacity wagons pulled by "twenty mule teams" that were actually teams of 18 mules and 2 horses each. The teams averaged two miles (3 km) an hour and required about 30 days to complete a round trip. The trade name 20-Mule Team Borax was established by Francis Marion Smith's Pacific Coast Borax Company after Smith acquired Coleman's borax holdings in 1890. A very memorable advertising campaign used the wagon's image to promote the Boraxo brand of granular hand soap and the Death Valley Days radio and television programs. Mining of the ore continued after the collapse of Coleman's empire, and by the 1920s, the area was the world's number one source of borax. Some 6 to 4 million years old, the Furnace Creek Formation is the primary source of borate minerals gathered from Death Valley's playas.

Later visitors stayed to prospect for and mine deposits of copper, gold, lead, and silver. These sporadic mining ventures were hampered by their remote location and the harsh desert environment. In December 1903, two men from Ballarat were prospecting for silver. One was an out of work Irish miner named Jack Keane and the other was a one-eyed Basque butcher named Domingo Etcharren. Keane, quite by accident, discovered an immense ledge of free-milling gold by the duo's work site and named the claim the Keane Wonder Mine. This started a minor and short-lived gold rush into the area. The Keane Wonder Mine along with mines at Rhyolite, Skidoo and Harrisburg were the only ones to extract enough metal ore to make them worthwhile. Outright shams such as Leadville also occurred, but most ventures quickly ended after a short series of prospecting mines failed to yield evidence of significant ore (these mines now dot the entire area and are a significant hazard to anyone who enters them). The boom towns which sprang up around these mines flourished during the first decade of the 20th century, but soon slowed down after the Panic of 1907.

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