THE HISTORY OF SALTDALE
By Alan Hensher,
Gregg Wilkerson, Larry M. Vredenburgh
1998
Introduction
Koehn Lake is a geologic anomaly: a
"moist" playa, in which shallow ground
water rises to the surface by capillary action, carrying with it salt,
which is deposited in
the center of the desert playa lake. This readily available source of
salt, close to
transportation and to major markets in Los Angeles and the San Joaquin
Valley was
also the site of one of the longest running deceptions in the Mojave
Desert.
The Saline Placer Act of January 31,
1901 which placed a limit of one mining
claim for saline minerals per locator was the basis of the deception.
It began in the
period between 1909 and 1913 when sixty saline placer claims were
located and leased
to Thomas Thorkildsen and Thomas H. Rosenberger for a period of forty
years. By
having individuals locate these claims, and subsequently lease them,
Thorkildsen was
able to tie up sufficient ground to begin salt production. Thorkildsen
during this period
began developing borate deposits near Lang in Los Angeles County, at
Stauffer in
Ventura County and near Daggett, giving William "Borax" Smith, a fright
that his borax
monopoly was less than secure.
The claim staking by Thorkildsen and
Rosenberger did not go unchallenged by
feisty Charles Koehn, founding father of the settlement of Kane (or
Koehn) Springs. Koehn had previously located claims on the lake bed and
challenged the claim jumpers
in January 1912 in a "lively" gun battle on the dry lake. Swift justice
was meeted out in
Randsburg, the Randsburg Miner reporting on February 10,
1912, that in the case of
People vs. T. H. Rosenberger and ten others, the defendants were found
guilty of
forcible entry and detainer, and Rosenberger was fined $50. Nearly a
year later, a happy
ending to the dispute was reported by the Miner; Koehn sold
his claims to Thorkildsen,
who in turn sold them to the Diamond Salt Company of Los Angeles.
Although more than
likely the Diamond Salt Company actually leased the property.
While the chain of ownership for the claims located on Koehn Lake is detailed in government investigations in between 1945 and 1971, the corporate relationship in the early years is confused. The Consolidated Salt Company was incorporated February 11, 1913, yet forfeited its charter November 1913, however the company's interests were not transferred until 1933. In addition, the Randsburg Miner continued to report as late as 1915 that the Diamond Salt Company was actively working the deposit.
Early Operations
The Consolidated Salt Company constructed a crushing and screening plant and laid a baby-gauge railroad track onto the playa, from where a gasoline-powered locomotive hauled the salt to the crusher. Consolidated began shipping in 1914: 240 tons or more a week by October. The output that year totaled 20,000 tons. In January 1915 the company was shipping about twelve cars of salt weekly.
Business boomed. Employing 30 men,
Consolidated was turning out about 720
tons a week by June, 1915. The crew was soon increased, to 65 in April,
1916, while a
4-story mill was under construction. A long-awaited post office was
finally established
that September. But a chronic problem-- the inability of the Southern
Pacific to supply
enough cars-- was delaying shipments by five months.
Consolidated ran an extensive
operation. Except during rainy winters, the
company pumped well water onto the lake floor. The brine thus produced
was then
pumped through a 1+-mile ditch into several pond-like "vats"--the
largest covering 43
acres--where the brine was allowed to evaporate. After two or three
months, a 6-inch
layer of very pure salt would form. At "harvest" time, a circular saw
mounted on a
portable platform cut the layer into cakes. The cakes were then cleaned
by hand, loaded
into small cars running on a temporary track, and hauled by a
gasoline-fueled locomotive
to the mill. There, the cakes were ground, sized in screens, sacked,
and shipped to Los
Angeles.
New-Comers to Koehn Lake
In activities which harkened back to
the claim staking by Thorkildsen and
Rosenberger?s crews in 1912, T. Y. DeFoor and Philo H. Crisp between
1916 and 1918,
located a block of one-hundred eleven mining claims on Kohen Lake. In
order to locate
this large block of claims "dummy-locators" were paid 5000 shares of
stock with a par
value of $1 per share for signing their names as locators. After DeFoor
located a claim
on the ground, he gave Crisp, an old time prospector in the Garlock
area that knew all
the section corners in the vicinity, the location notice and a deed
with the name of the
Grantee blank. At the same time, another associate, Paul Greenmore, a
resident of
Bakersfield, was rounding up the "dummy-locators" described as "just a
bunch of widows
none of whom could write a check for $50." Greenmore received $2.50 for
each signed
location notice. Each of the 111 claims was 20 acres, and each claim
was "located" by a
different individual. These claims were then deeded to the Fremont Salt
Company.
With location of these claims, a second
producer, the Fremont Salt Company,
incorporated Dec 7, 1916, built a plant on the east side of the playa
in 1917. In 1919,
when the Southern Sierras Power Company brought in electricity, the
companies
produced altogether 17,000 tons.
By then, the operations were becoming
somewhat erratic. Enough families were
living at the plants to induce the Kern County supervisors to organize
the Saltdale School
District in February, 1920. But Consolidated was employing only six
men, andfew pupils
showed up at school; in fact, no schoolhouse was built. Even so, the
companies
managed to produce 22,000 tons. The camps probably remained small, for
the school
district was absorbed by Garlock's in August, 1921. The output of salt
declined
somewhat, to about 18,900 tons in 1923.
The year 1922 also saw the transfer of claims held by Thomas
Thorkildsen and
Thomas H. Rosenberger to the Consolidated Salt Company.
Although Consolidated's operation was
being kept in good condition-- "as neat as
a lady's kitchen" --only six men were working in the mill in July,
1924, besides a handful
running the pumping plant and train. A shortage of water and power was
holding down
production, to about 6 to 10 tons a day. Apparently, the school was
moved from Garlock
to the plant about then. Alas, the building was little more than a
shack, and the institution
was one of the poorest in the county, suffering from a high rate of
absences. Although
H.C. Topp, "the rustling superintendent" for Consolidated, called 1925
the best season
so far, the companies finished the year with 6,900 tons, their lowest
total output.
Slowly, the operations began to
recover. The total output reached nearly 15,000
tons during the 1927 season. Even so, the companies were facing another
dry year.
Coming onto the scene was Henry Fenton,
the owner of the Western Salt
Company, based in San Diego. Western Salt had acquired part ownership
of the Long
Beach Salt Company, which in turn bought out Fremont on November 5,
1927. The Long
Beach Salt Company had operated salt ponds and a salt works in the
marshes opposite
Terminal Island between Wilmington and Long Beach. The salt operations
were
gradually displaced after discovery of oil.
Long Beach Salt dismantled the Fremont
Company's plant and concentrated
operations at Consolidated's plant. By then, the camp 5 'business
district" probably
included no more than a company store, the post office, the school, and
a service station
along the Cantil-Randsburg road.
The school, too, began to enjoy better
days. Under the guidance of its teacher,
Mrs. Ruby Rogers, and H.C. Topp, who also served as the district's
clerk, the school
began to set records for its high attendance rate. The building was
repaired, repainted,
and enlarged in late 1927, enough to make it "very attractive and well
lighted."
Like many camps then, Saltdale was
composed of two groups: managers, skilled
workers, and their families, who tended to be Anglo Protestants, and
common laborers
and their families, who were usually Latino Catholics. The Protestants
had their own
group, the Ladies' Aid Society, which held weekly meetings, often at
Cantil. For the
Catholics, many of whom worked at other camps, the center of religious
life was St.
Mary's Church, in Randsburg.
It was the job of many schools,
including Saltdale's, to bring the groups together.
To carry out the work of "Americanization," Latino children were
encouraged to
participate in play activities that demanded "the use of the English
language and the finer
points of good sportsmanship and cooperation." At a Christmas party
held in 1929, the
pupils put on a well-received play, after which cake and sandwiches
"and some delicious
enchiladas made by our Spanish American ladies" were served. Another
teacher, Mrs.
Caroline Larson, began teaching a night course in English
("Americanization") for Latinos
and a Spanish course for Anglos during the fall of 1930. She "deserves
a great deal of
credit," one correspondent commented.
Although the work at the mill was hot
and hard, the residents could enjoy an
abundance of humble pastimes during the late 1920s and early 1930s. The
Ladies' Aid
Society often held parties, bazaars, and fund-raising events. The mill
workers put on
dances that attracted people from all over Fremont Valley. The schools
at Cantil and
Saltdale together went on picnics, held Christmas parties, and put on
field days. During August, 1928, Mrs. A. Soto invited several friends
to "a splendid enchildada dinner" in
honor of her husband's birthday; a week later, two Latino youths spent
Labor Day
"swimming in the 20 per cent brine-solution ditch, and claimed that
they liked it. Felipe
Hernandez made an eager second for the impromptu swimming party."
Despite these simple pleasures,
Saltdale could suffer from its isolation. Since
Randsburg, 16 miles away, had the closest justice of the peace,
constable, and jail, crime
was easy to commit. The company store was robbed of several games one
night in
March, 1928. Topp "feels sure it was strangers and we feel sure no one
around here
would commit a felony," one correspondent explained. And rather than go
to the nearest
hospital, at Red Mountain, some mothers gave birth at home. But this
practice could lead
to complications: during the same week that a boy was born to one
family, in December,
1931, the infant daughter of another family died.
It must have been difficult for Saltdale to weather the Depression. A proposal was made in September, 1931, to consolidate the school districts at Saltdale and Cantil. The construction of a modern campus, the paper in Randsburg predicted, was probably "the best improvement that could be suggested." (The merger had to wait 20 years.)
Even though depressed, Saltdale and
other camps still had to be serviced. To
handle the shipments of salt, gypsite, and pumice, the Southern Pacific
built a modern
loading platform at Saltdale in late 1931, and the county graded 10
miles of the
Cantil-Randsburg road, which was now oiled. And to increase the flow of
brine, Long
Beach Salt blasted a 1.7-mile ditch in the mud of the lake. The
company, in fact, enjoyed
enough good years of production to keep its parent, Western Salt,
prosperous through
the Depression.
Two important transactions occurred in
1933. On June 3, 1933, all the leaseholds
held by the Consolidated Salt were transferred to the Long Beach Salt
Company. Then
in July 1933, 36 association placer claims were filed by the Long Beach
Salt Company
on Koehn Lake, allegedly for placer gold. The location of these claims
continued the
legacy of deceptively located claims on Kohen Lake, for with the
passage of the Mineral
Leasing Act of 1920, salt was no longer a mineral which could be
acquired with mining
claims.
Where the 1930s were prosperous, the
1940s, were another matter. An increased
amount of gypsum in the salt limited its sale to farms and factories.
The rainfall,
meanwhile, dwindled, finally drying up for a few years after January,
1947. Attempts to
run the plant on salt shipped from San Diego turned out to be
impractical. Only three
workers remained in 1949. The post office closed in June, 1950. The
school district was
dissolved in July, 1951, the same year that Fenton died. The Saltdale
operation, a family
member recalled, was "one of the few salt ventures that did not support
his good
judgment."
The mill, however, was kept intact and
modernized during the 1950s. It remained
a highly mechanized, round-the-clock operation that required only a
handful of workers.
The claims from which the salt
operations at Saltdale had germinated were known
to the United States. An extensive investigation was begun in 1945 by
geologists and
engineers with the General Land Office (case SF-62514). But apparently
died with the
creation of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 1946. The case was
reopened in
1956 when the president of the Long Beach Salt Company, had the
chutzpah to file a
protest with the agency when another company had filed a Sodium
Prospecting Permit
Application under the provisions of the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act. By
1960 the renewed
investigation died as well. The beginning of the end started with a
September 3, 1968
letter from D. Livengood, president of the West Coast Salt and Milling
Company of
Bakersfield. Livengood's letter to Secretary of Interior Udall,
Congressman Robert
Mathias, and the Bureau of Land Management shook the agency into
activity. Livengood
was steamed that Long Beach Salt Company was able to undercut his
product, which he
paid royalties to the United States from operations on Searles Lake.
Earlier
investigations focused on the manner in which Consolidated Salt, and
Fremont had
acquired the claims. The complaint that was filed July 23, 1973,
charged that there was
insufficient gold on the 36 claims located in 1933 to constitute a
valuable mineral
discovery. Even though salt was a valuable mineral which had been
produced since
1913, production had moved off of the pre-1920 (Mineral Leasing Act)
claims to the
claims filed in 1933. Incredibly in a civil case decided July 9, 1972,
the court decided that
the terms of the Saline Placer Act of 1901 had not been violated in the
location of the
pre-1920 mining claims. However, the fate of the 36 claims from which
Long Beach Salt
Company was producing salt was decided by the United States Interior
Board of Land
Appeals (IBLA) on December 2, 1975, when they declared the null and
void.
At the time of the IBLA's decision, only four workers remained--and none of them lived at Saltdale. The plant probably shut down soon afterward. Amid the rubble of buildings, the corrugated-iron shell of the mill still stood in May, 1980. The wind banged the doors eerily in the glow of the setting sun. A year and a half later, even this remnant of mining was gone.
SOURCES
William Ver Planck describes the
history and individual operations in Salt In
California, California Division of Mines, Bulletin 175 (March,
1958).
Descriptions of Fremont Valley,
including Koehn Lake, appear in David Thompson's The
Mohave Desert Region, California, U.S. Geological. Survey,
Water-Supply Paper 578
(1928).
Operation of Long Beach Salt Company in
Long Beach, and those of Thomas
Thorkildsen at Lang are described By Thomas E. Gay Jr., and Samuel R.
Hoffman in
"Mines and Mineral Deposits of Los Angeles County, California", California
Journal of
Mines and Geology Vol. 50, Nos. 3 and 4 (July-October 1954).
The day-to-day operations were pieced
together from several sources: California
Mining Bureau, Report 17 (1921) and Report 25
(1929), and the files of the Randsburg
Miner (1912-1915), the Mojave Press (1914-1919),
and the Randsburg Times, Mojave
Record, and Mojave-Randsburg Record-Times
(1924-1931).
Henry Fenton's life, including his
operations at Saltdale, are described by Laura
Fenton in Henry Fenton, typical American, San Diego(?):
1953(?).
Records of the Bureau of Land
Management were principally found in case file R
4367. The Interior Board of Land Appeals decision United States v.
Long Beach Salt
Company 23 IBLA 41 (1975) provided excellent background. The civil
suit United States
v. Long Beach Salt Company, Civil No. F-686, U.S.D.C., E.D.
California, was not
consulted, although it was referenced in the 1975 IBLA case.
This paper was published as follows:
Hensher, Alan, Vredenburgh, Larry M. and
Gregg Wilkerson, 1998, The History of
Saltdale in James P. Calzia and Robert E. Reynolds, eds.,
Finding Faults in the Mojave,
San Bernardino County Museum Association Quarterly, Vol 45 no. 1 and 2,
p. 19-21.