Fire and Forge

Fire & Forge, Chapter 1, The Middle of Nowhere Excerpt
Until he was six years old, Harry Rosenberg lived in a red caboose on the run-down T & T Railroad that crossed the Mojave Desert to the east of Death Valley—a hard, elemental landscape across which the hot wind blew with abrasive force, funneling down the barren mountains and across the salt wastes. It was during the Great Depression, but life had always been so tough in the desert that it was difficult for things to get worse. T & T stood for the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad that ran from Beatty, Nevada, through the arid Amargosa Valley south to Ludlow, California, where it connected with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. It also intersected with the Union Pacific Railroad in a desolate spot called Crucero, meaning in Spanish a “crossing.”
The T & T rail line, built by the Pacific Coast Borax Company, began operations in 1907 primarily to carry borax from the mines in the Death Valley region. The famous twenty-mule teams, capable of pulling 30 tons fully loaded, had stopped hauling ore eighteen years earlier in 1889; since then, no effective means of transportation had been found to take their place. No matter how valuable the ore, whether it was borax, talc or lead (the only exception being gold), without a railroad it was prohibitively expensive to ship it out of such a remote area, and many a man had gone bankrupt trying. Even with a railroad, the desert exacted a high toll in human life, particularly during the construction phase when workers quit faster than they could be hired. One journalist for The Goldfield News likened the summer working conditions to a “death pit.”It was far better when the daytime temperature was 50° F in January instead of 120° F in July. However, a train must run year-round, so its crews must work year-round, regardless of the weather.
The T & T came into existence in a boom time when gold strikes drew hordes of men into the Mojave Desert with the promise of easy fortunes. Industry moguls, such as Francis Marion Smith, known as the “Borax King,” and William Andrews Clark, known as the “Copper King,” built their own rail lines to reap even greater rewards. But just as the T & T was named after two areas it never reached—the gold fields in Nevada and the Pacific Coast—so also it never turned the huge profits Smith expected. The T & T showed a profit for only four years out of its 33 years of service (1907-1940). Clark’s rail line, running from Las Vegas to Goldfield, did even worse, ending operations in 1918.
In the preface to his book Death Valley & The Amargosa: A Land of Illusion, Richard E. Lingenfelter writes that “it is a land of the deluded and the self-deluding, of dreamers and con men. Even its hardest facts are tinged with aberrations.” That statement is certainly true of the prospectors, the mine owners, the railroad magnates, and the thousands upon thousands of investors who ended up with worthless stock, but it was not true of the railroad workers who kept the T & T operating under grueling conditions. Nor was it true of the miners. They knew what to expect, what they were supposed to be paid, and what were the risks they had to face. They were hopeful that their jobs would continue but were ready to move on if they did not. Some of them loved the desert; most endured it. They were not romantics about the land and its history. They were not aware of how wars on other continents were affecting mineral prices in the United States, or how skullduggery on Wall Street was affecting the value of gold. There were trains to be kept on schedule, leaving Crucero in the predawn glow at 4:45 A.M., arriving at Beatty in the glaring noonday light exactly at 12:05 P.M. There was borax as well as talc and lead that had to be blasted out of the earth, shoveled into ore cars and brought down spurs to the railroad stations at Acme and Gerstley. Let others dream. There was work to be done.
At the time Harry’s father (after whom he was named) began working for the T & T in 1916, the 168 miles of roadbed were so bad, derailments were a common hazard. One of the reasons was that most of the cars and engines had seen hard service elsewhere and some had no brakes. Harry describes the conditions as follows:
"Imagine a barren desert of mountains, sand dunes, deep valleys—one far below sea level—and searing heat with relentless wind storms that pick up gritty dust that literally sand-blasts paint off one’s car. Imagine too, a second-hand railroad slicing across the salty badlands of the Mojave Desert. Second-hand meant already in gross disrepair, a state of affairs never cured, because it was simply incurable."
Another reason for the poor condition of the roadbed was sudden destructive floods. Like many desert waterways, the Amargosa River and the Mojave River flow underground and are usually bone dry on the surface, except where they flow through canyons. But a cloudburst can summon them forth, turning them into dangerous torrents with the power to wash out tracks, sweep away bridges, and take lives. So also, places with cool picturesque names such as Silver Lake and Soda Lake are playas that are so hard and desiccated, they can be used as airfields—that is, until there is a storm. Any rail line that dared to cross such unpredictable places in those early days was inherently unstable and in constant danger of collapse.
It doesn’t rain often in the desert but when it does, it can be a gully washer. If a bridge went out, the line had to be shut down. The great flood in 1916 put the track that crossed Silver Lake—which was normally parched—under water and grossly weakened the bed, requiring miles of track to be moved eastward. The damage from the flood in 1938 was so extensive it brought the T & T to its knees. When track was out or a trestle damaged, it meant that no trains passed and no minerals got to the railhead until the line was restored.
In the 1930’s, the T & T’s headquarters, main terminal and shops were to the east of the Funeral Mountains at Death Valley Junction, which served as the Rosenbergs’ legal address, but home was wherever the outfit—as the repair crew and railcars were called—was working, such as Rasor, Zabriskie or Sperry Wash. Most of those places are gone now. Once the mines in Death Valley and the Amargosa region became unprofitable to work, there was no reason to maintain either the T & T or the little waterless sidings along the line. Beatty, Death Valley Junction, Shoshone, Tecopa, Baker, and Ludlow still exist, but other places, including Riggs, Leeland, and Val Jean have disappeared.
"Val Jean was one of the loneliest spots on earth. The outfit parked there just once in my memory in 1934 when I was six. It was in deepest wilderness. There was no road to Val Jean, although our Model A Ford, being a forerunner of the Jeep in its ability to manage rough country with reliability, gave us access. There was no section crew, no water, only a siding. About eight years later in 1942 when I was fourteen, my father and I went there on the motorcar that ran on the rails. He was taking an inventory of the rails just before they were pulled up and sent to Egypt for the war effort, the line having been abandoned. That day we stopped for lunch at Val Jean. Aside from the railroad itself, there was virtually no evidence of human habitation. I looked around and, along with a long-lost toy, I found a bird’s nest, complete with two sparrow chicks with their beaks opened wide for lunch. No telling how long they had been waiting. They were completely mummified by the infernal heat and dry air."