Far down on the southwestern side of Death Valley in the hilly area around the Wingate Wash there is a huge deposit of Epsom salts, a glittering field of white forming a perfect contrast with the soft colors of the surrounding hills.
It was shoveled into bags, and transported to the Trona Railway
Thomas Wright was a florist from Los Angeles set up a camp in Crystal Hills Wash in 1918 and prepared an area for salt mining where he had previously found some minerals.
He and his team decided to build a monorail on wooden trestles because building a narrow-gauge railway line was considered to be too expensive.
Mr. Wright and his team began construction of monorail track from freshly logged Douglas firs in 1922 and finished in 1924
The first locomotive was battery operated but it wasn’t powerful enough to pull loaded trains therefore, 7 conventional Fordson tractors and one Buda tractor were modified to build articulated monorail locomotives.
The brakes were only installed on the locomotive which caused reoccurring problems; each locomotive could carry a maximum of 3400 pounds while the carriages could carry 8500 pounds each.
The maximum downhill speed was 35 MPH and in the flat area, 30 mph could be reached; normal operating speed was eight MPH on the uphill and up to 15 MPH in the flat area.
It transported less salt than originally estimated within the first two years of its use.
The mine employed 12–15 workers in 1924/25. The epsomite could initially be scraped from the surface using gardener's tools, but the high-quality minerals were quickly depleted, and the remainder was mixed with 50% contaminants of sand, debris and other salts.
It closed operations and was out of business in 1926
The largest part of the monorail is now in a restricted area of the China Lake Naval Weapons Center "B" Range. The mine, however, is inside the Death Valley National Park
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