Greetings family, friends, and neighbors.  "Boraxo" is a familiar house cleaning product with a surprisingly rich Western heritage that we dig into in today's Historic Snippet.........Bill

Historic Snippets

20 MULE TEAM BORAX

Sodium borate, also known as borax, is a highly versatile mineral with uses ranging from household cleaning and laundry boosting, water softening, personal care items to industrial products in the manufacturing of glass, porcelain, ceramics and pesticides. 

While searching for gold, Aaron and Rose Winters discovered borax in 1881 in California’s Death Valley. Recognizing the expense and extreme effort to mine, produce and ship the product for processing across the treacherous desert to the nearest railhead, made the decision to sell their claim to Sacramento and Placerville mercantile business owner William Coleman for two thousand dollars. Coleman formed the Harmony Borax Works that he sold in 1890 to Oakland’s Francis Marion “Borax Smith” who devised a plan to use large mule teams pulling thirty ton loads in two large wagons, plus a third wagon for food and water, over the grueling one hundred and sixty mile overland route. The teams hauled more than twenty million pounds of borax out of Death Valley in six years of operation, establishing the image of the “20 Mule Team” as the lasting company symbol. 

A weekly radio program, Death Valley Days, featuring true accounts of the American Old West was created in 1930 and lasting fifteen years to advertise the companies household products: 20 Mule Team Borax laundry additive, Borateem laundry detergent, and Boraxo powdered hand soap. The radio show was re-developed as a syndicated television series in 1952 produced by Gene Autrey’s Flying A Productions, shot on location in Death Valley and at Apacheland Studio in Arizona, and hosted by several prominent figures including future President Ronald Reagan. Promotion of the borax products was handled by Rosemary Decamp. Death Valley Days was the first anthology series to appear on television featuring different characters and stories for each of 452 episodes, and combined with the radio episodes, is the longest running Western themed program in broadcast history.

Bill  11/25