Death Valley Railroad was scrapped around 1925 after the closure of the Terry lumber mill following a devastating fire. Death Valley Railroad The Death Valley Railroad (DVRR) was a narrow gauge railroad that operated in California's Death Valley to carry borax with the route running from Ryan, California to the mines at Ryan C., located just east of Death Valley National Park, to Death Valley Junction, a distance of approximately 20 miles. When mining operations at the Lila C. Mine were declining around 1914, Pacific Coast Borax Company began scouting the land outside Furnace Creek for richer borax deposits. Once they found some
Death Valley basins down the Owens River Valley through Searles and China Lakes and the Panamint Valley to the immediate west. As the area turned to desert, the water evaporated, leaving the abundance of evaporitic salts such as common sodium salts and borax, which were later exploited during the modern history of the region, primarily 1883 to 1907. Death Valley has a subtropical, hot desert climate (Köppen: "BWh"), with long, extremely hot summers and short, mild winters, as well as little rainfall. As a general rule, lower altitudes tend to have higher temperatures. When the sun heats the ground, that heat is