Boron. CA Parade With CAT And Mule Power

[daron]

I finally met Tom Ross (ACMOC member) last Saturday at the 50th Annual Boron Celebration Parade. Boron, CA is the home of US Borax's large open pit borax mine and refinery. It turns out Tom works for Borax in the Truck Shop (they have some very large earth/ore moving equipment). Tom bought this D2 from the Lancaster area, did some tuneup work, cleanup work, and paint work. He was in the Mojave, CA parade recently (I posted pix from it earlier).

In addition to the Cat, mules were also featured. Borax is known for their '20 Mule Team Borax' product (which represents a very small percentage of their product's use!) and used mule drawn wagons to haul borax from Death Valley to Mojave, CA in the 1880's (the deposit at Boron was not discovered until the 1920's). The company still has one set of the original wagons normally displayed at their Visitor Center. About ten years ago they somewhat refurbished the set. had a practice run in that year's Boron parade and appeared in the Rose Parade the following New Year's Day. This year they demothballed them again and they were the star attraction in Boron's annual celebration. Following Tom are some pix of the set waiting for the parade to 'pass' (they were the last entry), turning the corner, and heading toward the local park. On the horizon of the last picture can be seen some of the test stands at the Rocket Site portion of Edwards Air Force Base. The wagon set consists of two 7 ton capacity wagons ( the product was bagged in Death Valley before being hauled to the railhead at Mojave) and one 1200 gal. water wagon (the haul was through desert country with few water holes-many dry camps- with the round trip taking ~21 days. They backhauled hay, leaving both feed and water at the ~20 mile apart camps as needed.

Daron

[daron]

Remaining pix.

[gwhdiesel75]

Daron, very interesting text and subject. Wonderful photos! I noted the kid in the first two in Confederate uniform waving a Union flag! A little odd, perhaps. GWH

[Jack]

Real nice mules in that point span. I can't see the rest but I'd bet they are outstanding animals also for a show hitch like that. Very impressive.

Any idea who built the wagons? Those are some massive wheels.

Nice looking D2 5J. Does the wood stay in place OK on the tracks or does it need constant attention? I might want to parade mine some day, would be interested in how that works out.

Great pictures, interesting story. Thanks,

Jack