Death Valley - Day 5 - The Last Day and Last Word on Borax

[Composed 11/25/2023]

Alas, our Death Valley Adventure has come to a close. We used what little time we had in Vegas before our flight to make our way towards the Paris Casino. Our plan wasn't to gamble there, but to grab a photo of us in front of the faux-Eiffel Tower.

This act of Instagram Tourism was inspired by a photo we'd taken nearly 20 years earlier. The year was 2004, and we had arranged a one-day visit to Vegas while visiting my grandparents in California.

Here's, the photo from today, one from our last trip in 2019, and the original moment in 2004:

A couple of days ago, I noted that the impact of Death Valley borax far exceeded the short, 6-year lifespan of Harmony Borax. As we close out our trip, it's worth getting the rest of this story.

Our tale picks up with a new character: Francis Marion Smith, aka, the Borax King (not to be confused with the Plow King).

In 1890, another local miner by the name of William Tell Coleman owned the Harmony Borax Works and due to financial hardship, Coleman sold the Harmony Borax Works to Smith which included the holdings in western Nevada, the Death Valley Region, and the Calico Mountains near Yermo. Mr. Smith then consolidated them with his own holdings to form the Pacific Coast Borax Company in 1890.

Around this time Smith hired one of his administrator's sons, Stephen T. Mather as the company's advertising manager. Mather, 26, immediately executed one of the greatest branding maneuvers in history. He convinced Smith to market his product not with his name on it, but with the phrase '20 Mule Team Borax,' along with a picture of the mule team to match:

Mather understood the dynamic that the American public desired a dependable product that was strong and powerful, like a 20-Mule Team, that would work for them. Given the choice of another brand and the one portraying the strength and tenacity of twenty mule teams hauling ore out of the inferno of Death Valley, who could resist? Mather's employer, Francis Smith, however, didn't understand the value of advertising and left young Mather with a huge task and very little funding. It was Mather who was largely responsible for educating the American public as to the benefits and uses of borax. He created an image in the American mindset that every home needed to have a box of 20-Mule Team Borax in their home. Without much of a budget, he enlisted the talent of fellow New York Sun reporter, J.R. Spears, who was later to write a book, Illustrated Sketches of Death Valley And Other Borax Deserts of the Pacific Coast. The purpose was to expose the public to, and generate interest in Death Valley and borax.

Just a few days ago, I walked into my local grocery store and bought a box of '20-Mule Team Borax':

What I love about this branding is the presence of the 3rd and final 'wagon' being pulled. In Harmony's day, that was the position used by the water tank. Generally, it's an absurd waste to pull thousands of pounds of water. Unless, of course, you're pulling borax through a desert like Death Valley, then the water tank is essential. In short, it's not just the 20 mule team that's being celebrated here, but the 20 mule team slogging through Death Valley.

For years, Pacific Borax did most of its advertising in print. Here are examples from 1911 and 1921 respectively:

(Side note: if you look closely at he 1921 version, you'll see that the mules are indeed pulling a water tank.)

In 1930, the marketing team at Pacific Borax had a crazy idea: what if they utilized the new technology of radio to directly reach out to their customers? With the help of an advertising firm, they created a program, which they in turn could sponsor.

And thus, Death Valley Days was born. This radio program would run from 1930 to 1945. In 1952, it would have a revival, this time as a TV program.

The TV version alone ran 452 episodes, making it the second longest running Western Drama after Gunsmoke. If you add on the 15 years of radio programming, Death Valley Days is even more prolific. It's mind blowing to think that all this content was created with one goal: not entertainment, not education, not art, but to Sell More Borax.

You can watch episodes of Death Valley Days on YouTube, and listen to a handful of old radio broadcasts here. It would be a fun side project to get all 15 years of Death Valley Days radio program and package them up as a podcast; though it's not immediately obvious where to find all the episodes.

OK, so Death Valley Borax gave us epic examples of branding and product placement. Surely that's the end of the story. Nope, there's more!

Remember that 26-year-old branding genius, Stephen Mather? He would go on to get massively rich in the borax business. By his mid-40s, he would be open to a new challenge, one where he served not just a company but his nation:

... Mather had one reliable antidote for his depression—immersion into nature. He especially loved the country’s few western national parks, Yosemite and Sequoia in particular.

On a visit to those two parks in 1914, he was appalled by their condition. The parks were basically unmanaged, with no professional staff, shabby development and illegal use by miners, loggers and cattlemen. He wrote to the Secretary of the Interior, a friend from college, complaining about what he saw. The Secretary wrote back, “If you don’t like the way the national parks are run, why don’t you come… and run them yourself.”

Mather did as asked, retiring from business and moving to Washington for a planned one-year stint as an unpaid leader of the national parks. He lasted for 25 years, becoming the first director of the National Park Service when formed in 1916.

Mather was well informed by his experience with Pacific Borax:

Mather saw his job with the parks as similar to his job with borax: the most important function was marketing—using stories to demonstrate to people that their lives really needed the experience of visiting one or more national parks.

Many familiar aspects of the National Park System were innovations created by Mather and his team:

For example, ending the tradition of patronage jobs, Mather and Albright turned the park ranger into a symbol of integrity, physical prowess, and hard work. In another innovation, Mather insisted on selecting a single concessioner to run all the hotels or restaurants in a park. Competition might work in the general economy, but in parks Mather preferred total control to ensure consistently positive visitor experiences.

Mather also tightly controlled the selection of new parks, demanding that they meet the highest standards of scenery. To relieve the pressure of enshrining substandard parks, he jump-started a movement to create state parks.

Mather is remembered throughout the National Park System with a series of bronze Mather Plaques. If you find yourself in a National Park, it's a fun game to see if you can find one of these inspiring markers.

As we close out our adventure, it's fascinating to consider that there's a direct throughline between 40 or so Chinese immigrants mining Borax in Martian like conditions to our epic National Park System. In that sense, Death Valley isn't just a natural wonder, it's at the foundation of one of America's greatest assets.

Well played Death Valley Borax, well played.

Death Valley Day 4 - Mosaic Canyon, Mesquite Flat Dunes and Luxurious Las Vegas

[Composed 11/24/2023]

Our hike of Golden Canyon earlier in the day left me with a sense that surely we had just experienced the best Death Valley had to offer. And yet, as we started our hike in Mosaic Canyon, I felt myself once again slipping into that now familiar state of awe.

Mosaic Canyon is located a stone's throw from Stovepipe Wells, a tiny town located in Death Valley. This would be the last area we explored before hitting the road and making our way to Vegas for the last night of our travels.

Mosaic Canyon gets its name from the embedded rock tiles that form a sort of natural mosaic. While this feature is impressive, it's only one of a handful of qualities that make this hike so memorable. There are also polished walls to admire, dry falls to scale, conglomerate rock to ponder, and both narrow and expansive spaces to negotiate. After every hike we've taken in Death Valley, I feel like I want to announce that it's The One. That it's the quintessential Death Valley hike and a must-do. Sure enough, after we finished Mosaic Canyon I was ready to make this same pronouncement.

After the canyon, we drove a short distance to the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. The dunes are remarkable not just in their appearance, but also for their accessibility. You pull into a parking lot, walk a few yards, and poof, you're transported to another world; perhaps Arrakis or Tatooine.

I'm a firm believer in the photography advice offered by Jim Richardson: If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of better stuff. The Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes is that better stuff. It's hard to take a bad picture when the setting is so effortlessly perfect.

Calling Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes and Death Valley in general otherworldly isn't just poetic. It's also technically accurate. Time and again, the area has been used by scientists as a test bed for Martian tech.

"It’s a rite of passage for people who work on Mars to find your way out to Death Valley for some reason," he explained. "Whether it’s scientists who work on rocks or whether it’s more on the engineering side or if you’re someone like me who worries about landing things, once you get past those phases, it’s about getting out there and doing hardcore testing to prove to yourself that it will actually work when you land on Mars."
...
"Here in Death Valley, we have a unique ability to help understand other worlds," he said. The topography of the below-sea-level basin provides an excellent canvas for researchers, scientists and other groups. "Because it is so hot and so dry, we lack things like vegetation. When you come here, you see that geology exposed. That rocky terrain is in a lot of areas. Because of the volcanic activity here in Death Valley, it can be compared to the surface of Mars."

Here's a video of NASA's Curiosity Rover being tested on Death Valley sand dunes. The video doesn't say which dunes these were, but they could have easily been the ones we played on earlier in the day.

Or consider this enticingly titled paper, The Case for Extant Life on Mars and Its Possible Detection by the Viking Labeled Release Experiment . The experiment was made possible, in part, by Death Valley:

The [Viking labeled release experiment] technique was first developed in 1956 for the rapid detection of microorganisms (Levin et al., 1956) before its selection in 1970 as one of the Viking life-detection experiments. ... Field tests were also made in which working models of the instrument were taken to extreme environments, for example, Antarctica, White Mountain above the timberline, Salton Sea flats, Death Valley sands, all of which responded positively.

It's no surprise that scientists would find their way to Death Valley. Even as a casual observer, you can tell there's much to learn from this unique landscape.

From the dunes, we finally said goodbye to the park and made our way to Las Vegas. We checked into the MGM Signature, a hotel we'd stayed at before. In the past, we liked this hotel because it was located away from the main action, yet had an indoor walkway to the MGM Grand. This gave us effortless access to casino chaos. We also liked that all the rooms were suites and the hotel was non-smoking.

This time, however, after staying at the nebbish accommodations in Furnace Creek, the Signature felt like absolute luxury. I was bummed to be away from the magic of Death Valley, but I could get on board with the 5-star accommodations.