Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 105, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1912 — BIG POTASH DEPOSIT [ARTICLE]

BIG POTASH DEPOSIT

From Six to Ten Million Tons Found in Mojave Desert. Located in Old Lake Bed—Many Have Lost Lives in Traversing Waste Which Will Now Yield Product of Much Value. Washington.—Following the announcement by the geological survey that a survey party in connection with * party from the department of agriculture had located a potash deposit 4u the Mojave desert, the agricultural department tells more about the deposit and the circumstances under which it exists. The department states that a pocket has been found down in the Mojave desert in southern California containing from 6,000,000 to 10,000,000 tons, so far as can be ascertained now. The prospect is that it will last twenty or thirty years and tide the country over tjll a more thorough search can be made.

The deposit was struck simultaneously by the two searching parties in the Borax lake region of the Mojave. This section, like most of this southwestern country, Is an old lake bed. The borings for potash were made 16 a section of plya or hard desert sand. The region that has been investigated is underlaid by a big body of natural brine that comes to the surface in the form of wells'when borings are made,. / Borax lake, or Searle lake, is one of the many playas or intermittently wet and dry lakes common throughout the arid regions of the west. It lies between the Argus and Slate ranges, in the Mojave desert. Borax lake was the original scene of famous borax mines. The lake or flat is about ten miles long and five miles wide and has received the drainage from the surrounding mills for many thousands of years, vast quantities of dissolved

minerals being thus concentrated in It. The water has been evaporated under the intense heat of the long, hot seasons, but the salts have remained, so that for most of the year, In fact often throughout the year, the bed is a glistening plain of white salts, in attempting to cross which under a brazen sun men have lost their lives. The mirage plays its strange tricks here, and at the driest places the traveler can generally see what appears to be a broad expanse of water covering the bed a little way ahead—always a little distance off, until he approaches the shore of Borax lake. Then when he looks behind him he sees the water apparently covering the ground over which he has Just come. The lake occupies a valley made by faults —breaks and slips In

the earth’s crust —where a great area has been dropped down. . The salts are not evenly distributed over the surface of the lake. Borax was found plentifully over about three square miles, common salt is everywhere, and sodium carbonate and sodium sulphate are widely distributed. One boring is said to have passed through 28 feet of solid trona (hydrous carbonate of soda) of great purity. At other plaoes there Is 25 feet of solid mixed sulphate and carbonate of soda, with smaller quantities of other salts. Several years ago an English company attempted to work the soda deposits on an extensive scale, but for some reasons the project has not been pushed, .... ——