Boron, CA

Our few hours outside of Las Vegas, NV is the town of Boron, CA, located in the Mojave Desert. Boron is home to the largest borax mine in the world. This town is small – only about 2,000 people live here – but we stopped to visit the Twenty Mule Team Museum, where we received a personal tour of the museum and history of the town from Jerry, a local who has spent over 40 years working in the mine and living in the town. The museum is free and filled with some interesting items.

Jerry provided us with some great history on the use of Borax. We never knew there were so many uses for borax. Here is a listing from a Wikipedia posting on Borax:

“Borax is a component of many detergents, cosmetics, and enamel glazes. It is used to make buffer solutions in biochemistry, as a fire retardant, as an anti-fungal compound, in the manufacture of fiberglass, as a flux in metallurgy, neutron-capture shields for radioactive sources, a texturing agent in cooking, as a cross-linking agent in Slime, as an alkali in photographic developers, as a precursor for other boron compounds, and along with its inverse, boric acid, is useful as an insecticide.” – Wikipedia

In it’s raw form borax is a white, almost chalky substance.

Recently the mine began to produce lithium by sifting through mining waste in 2019. Jerry told us that the green substance on the end of this piece of ore is what ultimately becomes lithium.

How the miners, both men and women, lived was much more interesting to us. We had no idea that women were miners back in the 1920’s and 1930’s? Most of the miners chose to live underground since it was typically about 60-70 F (15-21 C) while above ground the temperatures in the summer can easily reach 115 F (46 C). Space was created in the mines for the men to live on one side and the women on the other. Married couples were given their own spaces. However, they did come above ground to do things like visit the beauty salon to curl their hair.

Some chose to live in the cabins provided by the mining company. Below is a typical one-room cabin that two women would have lived in.

Ronald Reagan, our 40th US President, was a spokesperson for the mine at one time.

All miners were required to learn the mine bell signals to ensure their safety. Joel asked Jerry if anyone had ever confused the last two signals since there is only 1 bell toll difference between “hoist me up” and “ready to blast”.

We also learned that a large part of the movie Erin Brockovich was filmed in Boron. While the movie was not based on any events that occurred here is was used as the location for filming. I remember that movie – very good if you haven’t seen it yet.

Near the entrance to the museum is a large painting of a mule that was painted by a prisoner in the nearby Federal Prison. The painting was done using an airbrush and is incredibly detailed. We were both impressed with it.

Across the street from the museum is the first 90 ton truck used at the mine. It was massive! There is a full sized truck next to it and a single story building behind it for comparison.

After spending more time than we expect to spend at the museum, we moved on to the Bakersfield River Run RV Park to spend our first night of this trip.