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MINING & REFINING
It takes a huge amount of minerals concentrated in one place to make a deposit worth mining. It also takes millions of years for the deposit to form. Here is an overview of how Borax's principle mine came into being.
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Lava Flow
About 19 million years ago, several active lava flows spread across the landscape of what is today, the Mojave Desert, forming a basin. |
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Hot Springs
Over many thousands of years, water collected in the basin, forming a lake. Clay from the surrounding rock formed an impermeable layer at the bottom. Hot springs rich in boron flowed into the lake, quickly cooling to form borax crystals. Finally, another layer of clay washed in, sandwiching the borax deposit in between. |
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Sand Storms
The lake dried up about 16 to 18 million years ago, leaving the borax crystals embedded in the clay. As time went by, sand washed in, covering the lakebed. Layer upon layer of sand buried the borax deposit more than 2,000 feet deep. |
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Tectonic Lifting and Erosion
Six million years ago, tectonic movement forced the entire Mojave region upward. This uplift, combined with years of erosion, brought the borax deposit to as close as 150 feet from the surface. During uplift, the deposit was broken along fault lines. Luckily, these faults have not been active for more than 10,000 years. |
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