Searles Lake | |
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Location | Searles Valley, Mojave Desert San Bernardino County, California |
Coordinates | 35°42′31″N117°19′15″W / 35.7087414°N 117.3209387°W |
Type | Endorheic basin |
Primary outflows | Terminal (evaporation) |
Basin countries | United States |
Max. length | 19 km (12 mi) |
Max. width | 13 km (8.1 mi) |
Shore length1 | 50 km (31 mi) |
Surface elevation | 493 m (1,617 ft) |
Settlements | Trona, California |
References | U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Searles Lake |
1 Shore length is not a well-defined measure. |
Searles Lake is an endorheic dry lake in the Searles Valley of the Mojave Desert, in northwestern San Bernardino County, California. The lake in the past was also called Slate Range Lake and Borax Lake.
The mining community of Trona is on its western shore. The evaporite basin is approximately 19 km (12 mi) long and 13 km (8.1 mi) at its widest point, yielding 1.7 million tons annually of industrial minerals within the basin to the Searles Valley Minerals mining operations. Searles Lake is bounded by the Argus and Slate Mountains. Named after John Wemple Searles. [1]
The stratigraphic record at Searles Lake shows that it once held brackish water as deep as 200 m (660 ft). Fluctuations in lake levels correspond to the advances and retreats of glaciers in the Sierra Nevada Range. Thirty major lake levels occurred during the last 150,000 years, represented by a sequence of salt and mud beds. The precipitation of minerals occurred during long periods of lake evaporation.
The lake is home to the Trona Pinnacles, a spectacular geologic tufa formation and a National Natural Landmark.
Searles Lake Borax discovery | |
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![]() Trona, California, abuts northwest of the dry Searles Lake bed. | |
Location | Trona Rd at Center St., San Bernardino, California |
Coordinates | 35°45′28″N117°22′38″W / 35.7577694444444°N 117.377358333333°W |
Designated | August 16, 1962 |
Reference no. | 774 |
Borax was first produced from the dry lake surface in 1873 by John Searles's San Bernardino Borax Mining Company. Searles was the first to haul borax using the famous 20 mule team wagons. In 1873, before the railroad was built to Mojave, refined borax was hauled 175 miles by 20 mule teams from Slate Range Playa (now called Searles Lake) to the harbor at San Pedro. The Searles Lake borax discovery has been designated California Historical Landmark #774, with a plaque at the roadside rest area in Trona. [2] From 1922 to 1928, the Epsom Salts Monorail crossed the Searles Lake on a wooden trestle.
Searles Lake is a huge resource of sodium and potassium minerals of the carbonate, sulfate, borate and halide classes of mineralogy. The manufacture of industrial minerals involves a complex solution mining operation in which naturally occurring brines are pumped from wells completed in several salt beds. The brine wells range in depth from near-surface to over 330 ft (100 m) below the salt pan. A network of production wells, injection wells, solar ponds and piping are used in the production and treatment of the brines.
Industrial minerals are extracted from the brines at the Argus, Trona and Westend plants. Minerals are crystallized from the brines, screened, washed, and dried. The crystals are then baked in rotary kilns to drive off water molecules locked in the crystalline structure. Some recrystallization may be required to achieve a desired composition and granular density. This complex extraction process at the three plants is generally referred to as fractional crystallization. It includes the treatment of brines through carbonation extraction, refrigeration extraction and/or solvent extraction. Salt is also harvested from the lake surface and from solar ponds.
Commodities produced by Searles Valley Minerals from their Searles Lake operations include borax, V-Bor (borax with five moles of water), anhydrous borax, boric acid, soda ash, salt cake and salt. Mineral reserves exceed four billion tons.
The Trona Pinnacles are in the California Desert National Conservation Area managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
California Historical Landmark marker reads:
The Mojave River is an intermittent river in the eastern San Bernardino Mountains and the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California, United States. Most of its flow is underground, while its surface channels remain dry most of the time, except for the headwaters and several bedrock gorges in the lower reaches.
Owens Lake is a mostly dry lake in the Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California. It is about 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Lone Pine. Unlike most dry lakes in the Basin and Range Province that have been dry for thousands of years, Owens held significant water until 1913, when much of the Owens River was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct, causing Owens Lake to desiccate by 1926. In 2006, 5% of the water flow was restored. As of 2013, it is the largest single source of dust pollution in the United States.
Searles Valley is a valley in the northern Mojave Desert of California, with the northern half in Inyo County and the southern half in San Bernardino County, California, United States.
Daggett is an unincorporated community located in San Bernardino County, California in the United States. The town is located on Interstate 40 ten miles (16 km) east of Barstow. The town has a population of about 200. The ZIP code is 92327 and the community is inside area code 760.
Twenty-mule teams were teams of eighteen mules and two horses attached to large wagons that transported borax out of Death Valley from 1883 to 1898. They traveled from mines across the Mojave Desert to the nearest railroad spur, 165 miles (266 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 (5 km) east of Calico, back to Daggett. There they worked from 1891 until 1898 when they were replaced by the Borate and Daggett Railroad.
The Old Spanish Trail is a historical trade route that connected the northern New Mexico settlements of Santa Fe, New Mexico with those of Los Angeles, California and southern California. Approximately 700 mi (1,100 km) long, the trail ran through areas of high mountains, arid deserts, and deep canyons. It is considered one of the most arduous of all trade routes ever established in the United States. Explored, in part, by Spanish explorers as early as the late 16th century, the trail was extensively used by traders with pack trains from about 1830 until the mid-1850s. The area was part of Mexico from Mexican independence in 1821 to the Mexican Cession to the United States in 1848.
Francis Marion Smith was an American miner, business magnate and civic builder in the Mojave Desert, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Oakland, California. He was known nationally and internationally as "Borax Smith" and "The Borax King", as his company produced the popular 20-Mule-Team Borax brand of household cleaner.
The Pacific Coast Borax Company (PCB) was a United States mining company founded in 1890 by the American borax magnate Francis Smith, the "Borax King".
Hanksite is a sulfate mineral, distinguished as one of only a handful that contain both carbonate and sulfate ions (a sulfate carbonate). It has the chemical formula Na22K(SO4)9(CO3)2Cl.
The Trona Railway is a 30.5 mi (49.1 km) short-line railroad owned by Searles Valley Minerals. The TRC interchanges with the Lone Pine Subdivision of the Union Pacific Railroad at Searles, California.
The Mojave Road, also known as Old Government Road, is a historic route and present day dirt road across what is now the Mojave National Preserve in the Mojave Desert in the United States. This rough road stretched 147 miles (237 km) from Beale's Crossing, to Fork of the Road location along the north bank of the Mojave River where the old Mojave Road split off from the route of the Old Spanish Trail/Mormon Road.
Searles Valley Minerals Inc. is a raw materials mining and production company with corporate offices in Overland Park, Kansas. It is owned by the Indian company Nirma. It has major operations in the Searles Valley centered in Trona, California where it is the town's largest employer. The company produces borax, boric acid, soda ash, salt cake, and salt. It also owns the Trona Railway.
American Trona Corporation Building is an industrial building on Pacific Avenue between 28th and 30th Streets in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It was built from 1916-1917 by the American Trona Corporation of California, to process and store salt potash from the company's mining facilities at Searles Lake in the Mojave Desert, near Trona in eastern San Bernardino County, California. It is now on the grounds of the Fort MacArthur housing annex of the Los Angeles Air Force Base.
Searles Valley is a census-designated place (CDP) in the Searles Valley of the Mojave Desert, in northwestern San Bernardino County, California.
Trona is an unincorporated community in San Bernardino County, California. In 2015 it had a population of approximately 1,900. Trona is at the western edge of Searles Lake, a dry lake bed in Searles Valley, southwest of Death Valley. The town takes its name from the mineral trona, abundant in the lakebed. It is about 170 miles (274 km) northeast of Los Angeles, on State Route 178. The ZIP code is 93562.
The Harmony Borax Works is located in Death Valley at Furnace Creek Springs, then called Greenland. It is now located within Death Valley National Park in Inyo County, California. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Bromine production in the United States of 225,000 tonnes in 2013 made that country the second-largest producer of bromine, after Israel. The US supplied 29 percent of world production. Since 2007, all US bromine has been produced by two companies in southern Arkansas, which extract bromine from brine pumped from the Smackover Formation. At an advertised price of US$3.50 to US$3.90 per kg, the US 2013 US production would have a value of roughly US$800 million.
Brine mining is the extraction of useful materials which are naturally dissolved in brine. The brine may be seawater, other surface water, groundwater, or hyper-saline solutions from several industries. It differs from solution mining or in-situ leaching in that those methods inject water or chemicals to dissolve materials which are in a solid state; in brine mining, the materials are already dissolved.
Chimney Rock was designated a California Historic Landmark (No.737) on June 6, 1960. It is located near Lucerne Valley, California in the mountains north of the Rabbit Springs Dry Lake and California State Route 18 near the Rabbit Springs Road junction. It is the site of the last battle between immigrant settlers and a Native American tribe in the Mojave Desert. Conflicts between Indians and white settlers over the rich lands of the San Bernardino Mountains ended in the battle at Chimney Rock on February 16, 1867. The Indians defended themselves against the settlers, but in the end retreated into the desert. An historical marker is beside Highway 18, next to the welcome sign on the town's western border.
The Potash wars were a series of events that took place from 1910 to 1915 in the Searles Valley near Searles Lake, a dry lake, near the current town of Trona in the San Bernardino County of California. The Potash wars gained national and international news at the time due to the involvement of famous lawman Wyatt Earp and the importance of the valley's supply of potash at the time. Potash is an important crop fertilizer and the Searles Valley was a major supplier in the 1910s.