8 BORAX OF DEATH VALLEY AND MOHAVE DESERT, [bull. 200. 
Borate, 12 miles northeast of Daggett, San Bernardino County, Cal. 
At the present time this plant, owned by the Pacific Coast Borax Com- 
pany, is the chief producer of borax and boracic acid in this country 
The value of this deposit led to extensive prospecting in various 
parts of the territory and to the discovery, in Death Valley, of enor- 
mous deposits that far excel those now being worked near Daggett. 
The borax of Death Valley, as well as that near Daggett, occurs in 
a regular stratum, interbedded with the semi-indurated sandy and clays 
that make up the bulk of the strata. These beds are generally regarded 
as of Tertiary age, and they are supposed to have been deposited in 
inclosed bodies of water. 
Since the bedded deposits of borax always occur in association with 
strata of this character, it is probable that careful study and search 
will reveal deposits of this nature in localities other than Death Val- 
ley and Daggett. 
For the purpose of locating outcrops of lake beds and studying 
their relations and contents, the writer made a rapid reconnaissance 
across southern California in the spring of 1900. The trip was too 
hastily made to permit of detailed examinations or of observations 
much beyond the line of traA r el, but many facts were found which have 
a bearing upon the occurrence of borax and its distribution, and these 
are embodied in the following paper. Of necessity the writer does 
not enter into a systematic treatise of the subject, but presents, in the 
form of an itinerary, the data gathered during this trip. 
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE REGION. 
Mohave Desert is located in Kern, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino 
-counties, Cal. It lies in the angle between the Sierra Madre on the 
south and the Sierra Nevada on the west. From these bounding 
mountain walls it stretches eastward to Colorado River and northward 
to Death Valley. 
This desert forms a part of the Great Basin. It is extremely arid 
and has no well-determined drainage lines. The few small streams 
that drain the snow-capped mountains on the border of the desert flow 
toward the interior, and are soon lost in the arid plains through which 
they flow. 
The surface is considerably diversified. In the western end it is 
generally regular and nearly level, but in the remaining parts it is 
composed of isolated knobs and short ranges of mountains having no 
noticeable system of arrangement and separating stretches of desert 
composed of vast alluvial fans and playas. 
Toward the north the mountains become more prominent, and in 
Inyo County form ranges which have a definite though somewhat com- 
plicated system of arrangement. North-south ranges are the most 
