04-09-2019, 07:33 PM
(04-09-2019, 07:17 PM)martyup Wrote:(04-09-2019, 01:02 AM)BostonCard Wrote: Yeah, but are you intrigued by it?
BC
Actually, I've been intrigued by the 20 Mule Team brand for a long time. It was named after the freight wagons that hauled the borax from the mines to the railhead.
Quote:Twenty-mule teamswere teams of eighteen mules and two horses attached to large wagons that transported borax out of Death Valley from 1883 to 1889. They traveled from mines across the Mojave Desert to the nearest railroad spur, 165 miles (275 km) away in Mojave. The routes were from the Harmony and Amargosa Borax Works to Daggett, California, and later Mojave, California. After Harmony and Amargosa shut down in 1888, the mule team's route was moved to the mines at Borate, 3 miles east of Calico, back to Daggett. There they worked from 1891 until 1898 when they were replaced by the Borate and Daggett Railroad.
The wagons were among the largest ever pulled by draft animals, designed to carry 10 short tons (9 metric tons) of borax ore at a time.
![[Image: 20_Mule_Team_in_Death_Valley.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/20_Mule_Team_in_Death_Valley.jpg)
are you a fan of Death Valley Days???
Quote:Under the Death Valley Days title, the program was sponsored by Pacific Coast Borax Company, which during the program's run changed its name to U.S. Borax Company following a merger. Advertisements for the company's best-known products, 20 Mule Team Borax, a laundry additive, Borateem, a laundry detergent, and Boraxo, a powdered hand soap, were often done by the program's host. Death Valley was the scene of much of the company's borax mining operations. The "20-Mule Team Borax" consumer products division of U.S. Borax was eventually bought out by the Dial Corporation, which as of 2014, as a division of the German consumer products concern Henkel, still manufactures and markets them. Rio Tinto Group absorbed the U.S. Borax mining operations in 1968[10] and now owns the TV series.[11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley_Days#Borax
Eric
"the older we get the better we were"
