Greetings family, friends, neighbors and train buddies. Today's rambling is about a unique monorail railroad that operated in Death Valley a century ago. Here's more to the story.........Bill

Railroad Ramblings 

EPSOM SALTS MONORAIL

When we think of “monorails” we most likely picture Disney’s comfortable air conditioned sleek seventh generation trains passing silently overhead on a carefully engineered concrete roadway atop sturdy permanent pylons. Unless you are familiar with the railroads of Death Valley, it’s highly unlikely that the short lived industrial Epson Salts Monorail comes to mind. The unique railroad was constructed to haul the mineral epsomite from deposits in hills near the Panamint Range in north western San Bernardino County, California twenty eight blistering miles to the nearest rail connection at Trona, and ultimately to the American Magnesium Company in Wilmington, California for processing.

A relatively inexpensive wooden monorail was envisioned to be more reliable than trucking the mineral ore sixty three miles on rugged unpaved back roads subject to landslides and washouts, and cheaper than grading and constructing a full blown narrow gauge railroad through valleys and over mountain passes. Two years of construction began in 1922 using millions of board feet of freshly logged Douglas Fir lumber to construct twenty eight miles of two

foot tall “A” frame trestles positioned eight feet apart and braced with 2x6’” balancing boards. 4x6” beams were used to hold the single conventional steel rails secured to the top of the trestles. Modified Fordson and Buda tractor’s provided the horsepower to pull the carefully balanced rectangular steel framed loaded ore carriages at anticipated speeds up to thirty mph and on grades up to ten percent.

The high quality minerals were quickly depleted and the speeds and efficiency of the monorail trains were never fully achieved. Extreme weather conditions, landslides, and the high cost of maintaining the wooden track that distorted when the uncured fir beams dried, along with the expense of retaining a crew at the mine site signaled the end of the ambitious plan. After two years of troublesome operation the Epsom Salts Monorail ceased operation and was partially dismantled and left in the desert to decay.

Photo: Searles Valley Historical Society -Bill