Everything about 20-mule Teams totally explained
» 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.
Further Information
Get more info on '20-mule Teams'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://twenty_mule_team.totallyexplained.com">Twenty mule team Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
