The Borax twenty mule team is one of the most memorable icons of the American West. The saga of the twenty mule team began in the Death Valley deserts in the 1800’s.
Borax, used for centuries in goldsmithing and ceramics, was being imported to the United States from Tibet and Italy. Credit for the discovery of borax crystals in Northern California goes to a physician who was testing waters there for medicinal properties. When ultimately “cottonball”, a crude ore compound of boron, oxygen, calcium and sodium, was discovered in large quantities, a domestic industry took hold. Cottonball, able to be harvested by shovel, lay in masses on the desert floor. But a challenge existed in getting the ore out of the wasteland for a growing industry of industial and household uses, such as laundry applications.
The borax had to be hauled 165 miles up and out of Death Valley, over the steep Panamint Mountains and across the desert to the nearest railroad junction at Mojave. The 20-day round trip started at 190 feet below sea level and climbed to an elevation of 2,000. According to legend, J.W.S. Perry and Ed Stiles, a young muleskinner, conjured up a plan of hitching two ten-mule teams together to form a 100-foot-long twenty mule team.
Between 1883 and 1889, the twenty mule teams hauled more than 20 million pounds of borax out of the Valley. During this span of time, not a single animal was lost nor did a single wagon break down, which is a considerable tribute to ingenuity and to the stamina and hardiness of the mules and the men who worked them.
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