Newport weekly independent., 1902-11-28
CALIFORNIA DESERTS.
Are Being Made Extremely Productive
 After Long Neglect.

AAt0i AouS NeRleSl'
 1t is unsafe, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, to condemn any of the desert lands of California as worthless because the surface is bar ren of vegetation. Some of these desert wastes are proving immensely valuable owing to their mineral de- poSits. The barren lands of Kern county have been found to cover in- cXhaustible reservoirs of crude pe- trolcum, and ground which only a few years ago no one would buy from the government at only 25 cents per acre Is worth at the present time much more than the richest agricul- tural land in the San Joaquin val- ley. The discovery of gold on the confines of the Mojave desert at Randsburg and on the edge of the Colorado desert at Hedges and other points opened new mining fields of great importance, which have since added materially to the mineral pro- ductiveness of the state. Copper, boraX, salt and hitter are among the mineral products which these deserts and their inhospitable and uninvit- ing environments are also yielding for the worlds enrichment.
 The saline deposits of the Califor- mia deserts promise, however, to be the most valuable of their varied min- eral resources. Death valley figures in the early annals of California in the role of Dante's "Inferno," and, like the latter, on its portals was plainly engraved: ''He who enters here leaves hope behind" In later years this graveyard of emigrants and luckless mining prospectors who attempted to cross its parched floor and died of thirst and the absorption of the moisture in their bodies by the intense heat and d1{ ness of its att mosphere has proved to be an inex- haustlble source of mineral wealth. Covering the bottom of the valley are great beds of borax and the bleak ranges surrounding it contain hitter deposits, which are destined to out rank the famous beds of Chili and Bolivia in productiveness and wealth. Added to these are enormous veins of rock salt and beds of chlorides ca pablo of supplying the wants of the world for all time. The climate of this valley and its environments has undergone no change, but its terrors have almost wholly disappeared through the discovery that nature has made it great mineral store- house.
 Dr. Gilbert E. Bailey's account of the saline deposits of California, which is given in California state mining bureau bulletin, throws new light on the mineral resources of the deserts. The known area of the ni-j ter beds in these wastes aggregates 35,OOO acres. The minimum thick ness of the surface deposits is put at six inches. Rejecting 5000 acres as unworkable, the remainder of this saline veneering of the mineralized district IS estimated to contain over 22,OOO,0OO tons of a commercial prod- uct. But there are strata in the for nation ranging in thickness from three to ten feet, in which the hitter is in places practically pure. These strata contain, taken as a whole, from 15 to upward of 40 per cent. of precious mineral. Figures fail to ex- press the aggregate contents of these veins. Dr. Bailey shows the wonder ful similarity between these hitter de- posits and the Chilian fields, which are now practically supplying the world and from which the little republic is drawing enormous revenues. For the past ten years they have been yield ing an average of over 1,000,0OO tons year, valued at $35, ,0oO,O nround numbers. But as the hitter in the Cal- ifornia deserts is more extensive. and the volume of the mineral in- fnitely greater than in Chili, we may form some idea of the immense wealth which will be finally drawn from these wastes when their mineral deposits are intelligently opened.