National Register #74000339: Harmony Borax Works in Death Valley National Park, California

Home San Francisco California The West The World


	California Intro
	California Map

	Alameda
	Alpine
	Amador
	Butte
	Calaveras
	Colusa
	Contra Costa
	Del Norte
	El Dorado
	Fresno
	Glenn
	Humboldt
	Imperial
	Inyo
	Kern
	Kings
	Lake
	Lassen
	Los Angeles
	Madera
	Marin
	Mariposa
	Mendocino
	Merced
	Modoc
	Mono
	Monterey
	Napa
	Nevada
	Orange
	Placer
	Plumas
	Riverside
	Sacramento
	San Benito
	San Bernardino
	San Diego
	San Francisco
	San Joaquin
	San Luis Obispo
	San Mateo
	Santa Barbara
	Santa Clara
	Santa Cruz
	Shasta
	Sierra
	Siskiyou
	Solano
	Sonoma
	Stanislaus
	Sutter
	Tehama
	Trinity
	Tulare
	Tuolumne
	Ventura
	Yolo
	Yuba

National Register of Historic Places in Inyo County, California

Harmony Borax Works Ruin

Harmony Borax Works 20-Mule Wagons

View from Harmony Borax Works

Both Photos 20 February 2007
(Click Photos to Enlarge)

National Register #74000339
Harmony Borax Works
Highway 190 (Milepost 109.1)
Death Valley National Park

From Borates Handbook of Deposits, Processing, Properties, & Use by Donald E Garrett, Academic Press, First Edition (July 15, 1998):

Aaron Winters was a poor homesteader living with his frail wife in a cave and one-room stone house with a tule-reed roof in nearby Ash Meadows. They lived much like the area's Piute Indians, eating mesquite beans, lizards, and chuckwallas when their other rations ran short. They had a fine spring running off the rock cliff next to the house, which formed a pool for a number of ducks, and water for a few chickens, a pig, and a large dog. They shared this water with wandering prospectors, and in 1880 one mentioned the simple test for borax. Winters immediately sent for some alcohol and acid, and when it arrived he and his wife traveled to Death Valley and gathered cotton-ball and surface crusts from the Furnace Creek playa. When they ground the samples and added acid and alcohol, all of them burned with a green flame, the sure test for borax.

Harmony Borax Works is also California Historic Landmark 773.

Previous Site | Next Site
Inyo County Index | Inyo County Map