Journey to Utah in 2013, part 1: to Boron and beyond

This post is the first in a series. To see the gallery, click here.

DREAMING THROUGH ANTELOPE VALLEY AGAIN

The spring of 2013 found me at liberty to leave town for a couple of weeks if I wanted to, and I most definitely wanted to. Bev (my grandma, for those who are new here) was another free-wheeling individual looking for a travel partner. We jumped into her RV and rode away from Santa Cruz, as we'd done annually since May 2008. Our ultimate destination this year was a section of Utah where Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park lie close together. It was marvelous to be on the move again, traveling a now-familiar path across Kern County, California, daydreaming and looking out the window with a camera in my hands.

I made mental notes of the things I'd seen before as we passed them: cows chewing grass on rolling hills near Paso Robles, Tehachapi Pass and its windmills overlooking red barn buildings, and the Mojave Air and Space Port looking like a mirage in the distance off of Route 58. The rhythm of desert driving had become familiar, the scenery no longer foreign. I felt possessive of these views now, and welcomed the sense of anonymity and freedom that came with them. I said something aloud about how often we'd driven through this part of the state without stopping. “We can take a break anywhere you want to, just say the word,” Bev said. “We have plenty of time.” A sign appeared alerting us to the approaching town of Boron. We would pause here for a look at the world's largest borax mine, located just outside of town.

By this point in the journey I'd become so spaced out staring out the window at the desert scenery that I felt like a figment of my own imagination. Maybe that's all I really am, I thought for the hundredth time that day. We drove through the mine's security gate and I forced myself back into the present moment, trying to believe in the reality of our conversation with the uniformed security guard, an exchange Bev was conducting with admirable groundedness. Employing her usual caution, Bev drove the RV up a step hill to the edge of an enormous open pit, where we paid the $3 admission fee to enter the Borax Visitor Center.

Housed in two quonset huts on the edge of the mine, this museum focuses on geology, manufacturing, and the Borax corporation's history. For a spot in the middle of nowhere, it gets a surprisingly large number of visitors, many of whom are students on school field trips. I felt like a field-tripping student myself, as my latent fascination with geology was sparked by the prospect of looking into a big hole in the ground. Once inside the museum, I was drawn in by the elaborate scale models of the mine's machinery, and by glass cases which housed the largest borate crystals ever found in the pit. In a universe chock full of separate sub-universes, the borax mine was yet another strange little world, complete unto itself.

CHASMS AND EVAPORITES

Bev and I learned that borates are included in a wide range of products, from Pyrex to experimental cancer treatments. The stuff that came out of that hole in the ground had plenty of tangible, everyday applications. But how did it get into the ground in the first place? How did the largest borate deposit on Earth come to be? I needed more details than what the quonset hut exhibits provided. I was trying to anchor my daydreaming self in the earth's physicality; I sought to place my surroundings within a longer, more encompassing timeline than my own. So I did some research on the topic.

Once upon a time, 20 million years ago in the Miocene Era, movement along a fault now known as Western Borax Fault created a basin which filled with hot water chock full of minerals, due to the action of underground volcanic springs. Together with water from the surface, the mineral-laden water formed a lake that expanded and contracted over time and finally dried up forever, leaving layers of evaporites interbedded with layers of mud and clay. Evaporites, as you can probably guess, are concentrations of water-soluble minerals left behind when water evaporates. Sometimes known as sodium tetraborate decahydrate – chemical formula Na2(B4O5)(OH)4•8(H2O) – borax is found with other evaporites in huge quantities here in what's known as the Kramer Borate Deposit.

Borax has been scraped out of the ground here since the 1920s, though for the first 30 years or so the mine was underground, not in an open pit. We watched videos depicting the famed Twenty Mule Teams, the borax-hauling mules of a bygone era whose image represented the brand long after their actual work for the mines was done. When we strolled outside to the front of the museum, we were greeted by a full-size replica of a twenty mule team made of fiberglass. I photographed their faces, and felt the dreamlike sensation come rushing upon me again.

Behind the quonset huts, we walked out to the very edge of the mine to look down into a terraced chasm, while gusts of desert wind nearly knocked us to the ground. Mining trucks and diggers looked like miniatures in this huge pit whose depth exceeds 750 feet. The giant hole in the earth before us was unexpectedly beautiful. I realize that open pit mining of any kind is not good for the local environment, but that day I found the subtle colors and regular planes of the borax mine compelling. I was feeling the thrill of peeking under the skin of the earth. Soon, I knew, this trip would take us to places where geological history was revealed without the use of machines.

THE MOUNTAINS AROUND LAS VEGAS

We bid farewell to Boron and stayed on Route 58 a bit longer, then switched over to I-15 headed towards Las Vegas. We were now just south of Death Valley, in the land of dust devils and sandstorms. As we approached Las Vegas, the sky grew dark above the mountains east of the city and soon the desert was under the spell of a rain shower. We tried to find our way around the outer edge of the city and got confused by our GPS system, then stopped for gas, the rain pelting Bev as she filled the tank. I stared out the streaked windows at the traffic and the peaks beyond it. Las Vegas seemed to be surrounded by mountain ranges.

Later I learned that the city inhabits a downdropped basin called Las Vegas Valley, a section of the Earth that has been stretched out and sunken in as the Earth's crust spreads out. Crustal extension causes fault lines to form, and mountain ranges rise up on one side of the fault line while basins drop down on the other. It was this type of tectonic activity that created the basin where the aforementioned Kramer Borate Deposit was made, and also Badwater Basin at Death Valley, which I described a little bit in this earlier post. Many other similar basins and accompanying mountain ranges exist in the enormous Basin and Range Province, which includes parts of four states and covers 300,000 square miles.

I knew little of this geological background on the day of that drive through Las Vegas. It was the experience of watching the topography change as we drove from California to Nevada to Arizona to Utah – in other words, through the Basin and Range Province – that made me decide to investigate the deep history of this region. What I saw had an explanation and I needed to know what that was. After this trip was done, I found a wonderful book called Rough-Hewn Land: A Geologic Journey From California to the Rocky Mountains by Keith Heyer Meldahl. Much of my understanding about the stuff I saw on this journey to Utah was based on concepts I learned from this book. Reading it taught me that everything I'd seen on my various trips to places in the American West was connected to a larger geological story.

That afternoon in Las Vegas, however, I was innocent of such knowledge, just a road trip passenger taking pictures of the desert. After the brief storm had passed, the streets gleamed with moisture. I opened my passenger side window and inhaled the smell of wet pavement and humid air, and caught a glimpse of a red curtain flapping in the window of an apartment. At a long red light I saw two riders waiting for a break in the traffic to cross with their horses. The color red had already become a recurring motif on this trip. I lost myself in speculation as Bev drove us away from the city and the landscape began to change again.

ENTERING THE VALLEY OF FIRE

We continued northeast as the signs of civilization faded. Clouds hung low, dispensing occasional drops of rain on our bug-splattered windshield. The air that came in my open window was charged with moisture. All around me the dull desert colors were muted even further by the overcast end-of-afternoon sky, through which no sunset colors showed at all. I loved the look of the pale green and yellow desert plants on either side of the winding road, and the faded purple of the higher ground ahead. Hypnotized by the landscape, I watched the Muddy Mountains grow larger as we approached them.

A companionable silence had taken over inside our vehicle. It was comfortable to float along in this serene, empty world, further away from the city every second and headed for the wilderness. I realized we were now fully in the liminal space of our trip. We'd left behind California, had released our Santa Cruz identities and embraced temporary roles only relevant in the little world of the RV.

The terrain began to alter as the Valley of Fire Highway took us closer to the mountains. I began to see sharper and steeper outcroppings of rock on either side of us, hills and walls that rose up to obscure our view. Soon, the color red appeared, as foreshadowed by the flapping curtain I'd seen earlier in a stranger's open window. First showing as streaks in lighter-colored rock and as the occasional small boulder, red expanded to become huge piles of stone, vivid even in the gloomy twilight. I expressed my approval. “Wait til you see it in the morning,” Bev said. 

To see lots more photos of Boron and Valley of Fire State Park, click here.