1862 – John and Dennis Searles were out in the Mojave looking for gold when they stumbled on something unexpected: borax crystals in a dry lakebed. That discovery would change the valley forever.
1873 – The brothers formed the San Bernardino Borax Mining Company and started pulling borax from the dry lake that would later bear their name—Searles Lake.
1908 – With more minerals beneath the lakebed than anyone first realized, the California Trona Company staked big claims. Potash, especially, was in high demand.
1910–1915 – The “Potash Wars” kicked off. Competing companies (and even folks like Wyatt Earp) scrambled for control over the riches buried in the lake.
1913 – The American Trona Corporation took over, built up operations, and founded the town of Trona as a place for its workers to live.
1914 – The Trona Railway was completed, finally connecting this remote desert town to the wider world by rail.
1922–1928 – A strange little monorail carried Epsom salts across the lake. It was a short-lived experiment but a memorable one.
1926 – The company rebranded as American Potash and Chemical. It wasn’t just borax anymore—Trona was now producing various industrial minerals.
1967 – Kerr-McGee, known more for oil and nuclear work, bought up the operation and brought big changes.
1974 – The company town model was starting to fade. Kerr-McGee began stepping back from running the town, which upset many locals who had grown up in the tightly-knit community.
1990 – North American Chemical took over the operation for a hefty price, over $200 million. The handoffs kept coming.
1998–2008—The plant changed hands again—IMC Global, then Sun Capital (which renamed it Searles Valley Minerals), and finally Nirma, an Indian company, took ownership.
2019 – A strong earthquake hit near Ridgecrest and shook Trona hard. Homes and roads were damaged, and the town’s resilience was tested again.
Today, Trona is still where the earth gives up its hidden riches, but it’s also a town with weathered booms, busts, and quakes. It’s got one of the strangest and most beautiful backyards in California—the Trona Pinnacles—where ancient tufa towers rise from the dry lakebed, a reminder that this place has always been shaped by deep time and strong forces.