Twenty mule team

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For information on the cleaning product, please see Twenty-Mule-Team Borax.

Twenty mule teams were teams of eighteen mules and two horses attached to large wagons that ferried borax out of Death Valley from 1883 to 1889. They traveled from mines to the nearest railroad spur, 165 miles (275 km) away in Mojave, California.

In 1877, six years before twenty mule teams had been introduced into Death Valley, Scientific American reported that Francis Marion Smith and his brother had shipped their company's borax in a 30-ton load using two large wagons with a third wagon for food and water drawn by a 24-mule team over a 160-mile stretch of desert between Teel's Marsh and Wadsworth, Nevada.

The twenty mule team wagons were among the largest ever pulled by horses, designed to carry 10 short tons (9 metric tons) of borax ore at a time. The rear wheels measured seven feet (2.1 m) high, with tires made of one-inch-thick (25 mm) iron. The wagons beds measured 16 feet long and were 6 feet deep (4.9 m long, 1.8 m deep); constructed of solid oak, they weighed 7,800 pounds (3,500 kg) empty; when loaded with ore and a 500 U.S. gallon (1900 L) water tank was added the total weight of the mule train was 73,200 pounds (33.2 metric tons or 36 1/2 short tons). With the mules, the caravan stretched over 100 feet (30 m).

The horses were the wheelers, the last two animals in the double line—that is, the two closest to the wagon. They were ridden by one of the three men generally required to operate the wagons, and were generally larger than their mule brethren. They had great brute strength for starting the wagons moving and could withstand the jarring of the heavy wagon tongue, but the mules were smarter and better suited to work in desert conditions. In the "Proceedings Fifth Death Valley Conference on History and Prehistory," two articles discussed freight operations in the Mojave with specific details on the use of mules and horses. "Of Myths and Men: Separating Fact from Fiction in the Twenty Mule Team Story," author Ted Fave discussed how the teams were assembled, trained, and used. "Nadeau's Freighting Teams in the Mojave," based on Remi Nadeau's historic accomplishments hauling freight throughout the desert region, gives further insight as to the superiority of mules for general use.

The teams hauled more than 20 million pounds (9,000 metric tons) of borax out of Death Valley in the six years of the operation.

[edit] External links

• Twenty Mule Team Museum

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[edit] References

(1999) Proceedings Fifth Death Valley Conference on History and Prehistory: Remi Nadeau's Freighting Teams in the Southern Mining Camps; Of Myths and Men: Separating Fact from Fiction in the Twenty-Mule Team Story. Community Printing and Publishing, Bishop, California 93514. ISBN 0-912494-05-0.