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:''For information on the cleaning product, please see'' Twenty-Mule-Team Borax. :''For the film starring Wallace Beery, see ''20 Mule Team (1940 film)''. 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 across the Mojave Desert to the nearest railroad spur, 165 miles (275 km) away in Mojave. The routes were from the Harmony and Amargosa Borax Works to Daggett, California, and later Mojave, California. After Harmony and Amargosa shut down in 1888, the mule team's route was moved to the mines at Borate, 3 miles east of Calico, back to Daggett. There they worked from 1891 until 1898 when they were replaced by the Borate and Daggett Railroad. The wagons were among the largest ever pulled by draft animals, designed to carry 10 short tons (9 metric tons) of borax ore at a time. ==History== 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 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 wagon 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, the total weight of the mule train was 73,200 pounds (33.2 metric tons or 36.6 short tons). The first wagon was the trailer, the second was "the tender" or the "back action", and the tank wagon brought up the rear. With the mules, the caravan stretched over 180 feet (55 m). No wagon ever broke down in transit on the desert due to their construction.〔http://scvhisto.ipower.com/scvhistory/borax-20muleteam.htm〕 A 1,200-U.S.-gallon (4542.49 L) water tank was added to supply the mules with water en route.〔http://www.scribd.com/doc/2095338/194006-Desert-Magazine-1940-June Desert Magazine June 1940〕 There were water barrels on the wagons for the teamster and the swamper. Water supplies were refilled at springs along the way, as it was not possible to carry enough water for the entire trip. The tank water was used at dry camps and water stops. The June 1940 issue of ''Desert Magazine'' confirms that the primary water tank was 1200 U.S. gallons. This detail is also given in "The History Behind the Scale Model".〔http://www.muleteamkits.com/fbody.html The History Behind the Scale Model〕 An efficient system of dispersing feed and water along the road was put in use. Teams outbound from Mojave, pulling empty wagons, hauled their own feed and supplies, which were dropped off at successive camps as the outfit traveled. The supplies would be on hand to use when a loaded wagon came back the other way, and no payload space was wasted. There was one stretch of road where a 500-gallon wagon was added to take water to a dry camp for the team that would be coming from the opposite direction. The arriving team would use the water and take the empty tank back to the spring on their haul the next day, ready for re-filling and staging by the next outbound outfit.〔Of Myths and Men: Separating Fact from Fiction in the Twenty Mule Team Story, by Ted Faye, Proceedings Fifth Death Valley Conference on History and Prehistory〕 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. Pacific Borax began shipping product by train in 1896.〔() Buckboard Days in Borate, Desert Magazine, September 1939〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Twenty-mule team」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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