The image of 20 mules hauling a train of wagons was once as familiar as the golden arches.  It was the trademark of Pacific Coast Borax’s most famous product, a laundry additive called Twenty Mule Team Borax.  The company’s advertising was linked to the connection between the twenty mule teams and America’s most notorious desert, Death Valley.  From 1883 to 1888, teams of mules and wagons hauled borax out of the famed valley on the California-Nevada border.  The teams were not famous then; they were just a common means of transportation.  It was not the first time 20 mules hauled borax and it was not the longest or the most treacherous path.  This is the story of how this common form of transportation (the big-rig truck of its day) become transformed into an American icon.
Softcover, 6 x 9, 128 pgs.