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This aerial picture of the mine is close to 1938 (See picture above and article below) . The multicolored tank had not been built. The nurses’ house had not been either.

The road top left went east to the homes called Beverly Hill. Beyond them was the dump. A fantastic place where coyotes met and glass turned purple! The 3 storied building was the store, Post Office (delivered to Kramer via Hinckley), office, and chemical lab. 

The building down to the right is the Rec Hall and then the RR spur that went to the sack room.  Directly above the Rec Hall was the scraped bit to Amargo.  Later Gephart school was installed on top of the hill.

The  building sitting between the Company store and the Rec Hall was moved from there to ? The building down and right was the mess hall. Over the RR tracks was the cook’s rooms and the next 2 cabins were for Chemists and office workers.

North of the first house was the Water tower. The cabin south of the tank was the first home of George Swain  (“Walkin' George”) .

The road curves past and went west to the Western and Sucow mines. The RR spur heading north passes a large tank and west of that was our softball field.

~Jack

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This photo of the old plant and all the narrative Jack has included brings back lots of memories. 

I might add that the building he questioned was the old office building and when they brought in the new office, lab, etc., building from Death Valley (three -storied),  they split the old building and made one half into a dispensary and home for the Company nurse (I believe it was Grace McCutchen at that time. She later married Roy Osborne, plant manager).

The other half of the old building was moved across the RR tracks as housing for Company personnel.  I forget where the dispensary was finally located but maybe it will show up in later photos of the plant area. 

In the photo, you can spot the softball field and if you look closely the light poles that lit the field for night games.  All “MULES” games were very well attended as they were about the only entertainment in the community at the time.  I remember that George Killinger (manager of the company store) took care of the sound system and announced the games, etc.  He always started the evening by playing very loudly "Take Me Out to The Ball Game" over the loud speaker!!! 

Also, Jack mentioned that the big water tank wasn't installed at the time of the photo.   We think the parts of the water tank to be are shown to the east of the softball field and Tom mentioned that he and his brother Gene (who used to work at the plant on weekends during their high school years) spent many of their days cleaning parts of that tank that was later welded together by a steel construction company and installed.  It can be seen in the later photo of the company store building.  Just a little bit more history...

~Joyce

 

My main assignment during the 1974 strike was foreman of the special quality boric acid plant at Wilmington. We basically took the regular boric acid and remade it with an extra trip through the centrifuge basket to get a purer grade, which was requested by nuclear power plants and some medical uses.
 
It was the eleventh hour of the night shift and I offered to spell the centrifuge operator. I was doing fine but becoming mesmerized with the basket. I seemed to want it to go faster and was careless putting the brass plow in. The handle broke off the plow catching my right index finger between it and the basket, taking the tip off my finger and after missing my head by about an inch flew across the room. With my finger squirting blood in the air I went to the chemistry lab, which was our first aid station.  They got me in a car and I left Wilmington with my right index finger signaling high in the air for the Harbor Hospital. They put some stitches in and I got some time off, the hard way. I later went to Boron to finish out my duty tour.
 
I was lucky that I was not the first casualty of the 1974 Civil War but I think they should have given me a purple heart.   

~Dave

Once in 1932 we lived in a row of houses on top of "Beverly" hill east of the main mine. It was a warm sunny day and I at age of two started down to the mines across the 1/2 mile (estimate) of Mojave Desert. I divested my clothing as I went. I'm not sure if I knew my destination but I did find the Ross patio with fish pond in my birthday suit.
 
We had no air conditioning to speak of. Shade was nice and ethyl and tamarack or tamarisk were the only trees that could survive the desert. I was conceived in Death Valley so I guess I came acclimatized.  They built double roofs on the miner’s cabins, and in the 40's they installed evaporation coolers. They consisted of an electric fan surrounded by wood shavings that water was dripped through.  

When the mines ran night shifts, they slept in cabins that were buried with earth. In any event you didn't sleep wearing much in the summer. I remember an underground water tank built. When the cement had cured they sent  some of us kids to knock out the supports for the roofs. That was HOT!  
~Jack

 

Phil Dobbs was our man in Mexico during most of the Magdalena borate project. He was an avid fisherman. Several of us, including Jack Colvin and Dennis Boyle of the Land Department, joined Phil on some of his fishing trips to the Klamath River and off shore from Ventura. When I visited the project in Magdalena, we occasionally would take off on Saturday evening and drive down to Bahia Keno and fish there on Sunday.

As an off-shoot of the Mexican borate project, we had Phil investigate the borates occurrences in Baja that Harry Gower wrote up and he went on to sample some of the other hot springs along the Gulf shore, including the one at Spa Buena Vista. At that time, Spa Buena Vista consisted of only 9 rooms, but it did have a fishing boat that Phil tried out.  He arranged for several of us to take a short vacation trip there in 1987. This was followed by several other trips and expanded to include George Griggs and one or two others on occasion. Once, Phil’s wife, Shirley, came along and out-fished everyone, so from then on there were no wives or other women on the trips.

I have included two recent photos for the scenery – we practiced catch and release so we have no fish photos, as I recall.  For anyone who likes to fish, the Baja Gulf coast is hard to beat for both the fishing and the weather.  There is still a little of the local influence in the smaller towns up the coast from Cabo. 

~Bob

Throughout my life intertwined with borax there has been one overwhelming constant, "what could that be you ask?" There are so many needs of mankind food, sleep, shelter.  There is one thing that man cannot survive without, and that is WATER!  Now despite the situation, there is an abundance of water in Boron.  The Muroc "dry" lake sits on an aquifer of immense proportions.  The water table under Amargo (bitter) was always ridiculously close to the surface.  I think  because of it's proximity to Muroc. Unfortunately the flavor left a lot to be desired. On the other hand the deep wells tapped into water from the Sierras that was as sweet and pure as any on this planet. 

One of my earliest recollections was filling 5 gallon tins with water with Clarence in his model A pickup from the wells north of the mine for my Grandma Ishmael. This made some exquisite home brew (during  Prohibition?).  Anyway this leads to what every young boy yearns for, water to immerse his body in.
 
From an early age I had transportation in the form of a hand me down bicycle from Billy Potts (my baby sitter) so with this I could travel to the far ends of my world like the Western mine.  Now the Western in digging, had run into a large quantity of water.  This was pumped into a large cistern where it dissolved the borax to a super saturated solution. This was a deep, cold and algae free swimming pool. It killed any of the varmints that tried to drink it. So after we cleared anything on the surface we could swim!  One other slight problem.  When one climbed from the pool and dried in the desert air, you had distinctly white crystal look all over your body.
 
A second pool of liquid we tried to swim in was the tailings from the mine.  This is the grey green soup that was pumped from the mills. When one had his fill of swimming in this mud you could run and jump into the dry tailings coating yourself in scale like skin.  It was not far to the showers, but one had to pull on their levis over this dinosaur skin that adhered to every hair on your legs. 
 
There was a time when the mines were dug with drag lines so that some three tunnels were scraped clear of ore. This greatly weakened the mines and increased the danger of cave in. So holes were drilled from the surface and great quantities of moist earth were bulldozed into the slopes. The water was kept in large rectangular tanks. This was ideal for swimming, with a couple little flaws, the tanks grew a fantastic crop of algae on all walls which made it difficult to exit with any speed.  One warm afternoon a caravan of cars arrived while Freddy and I were swimming au natural. It was the first stalemate I ever encountered. In the tank decent, or out in front of cars full of mixed spectators.
 
The last swimming hole we had was to turn a fire hydrant on and stand in front of the flow and force the water out, into the desert. This was such a waste that the superintendent Pete Grim said if we dug it, he would have it plastered and a sand filter built…..in his yard! But I can't complain 
he never denied me access.
 
~Jack