Trona, California

An ode to the Detroit of the California desert.

Original photo

There are few road trips in the Golden State quite so paradoxically picturesque and jarring as the 214 mile drive from downtown Los Angeles to Death Valley National Park. With each mile of the journey, the landscape turns increasingly alien, desolate and, more often than not, downright creepy, culminating in the desert’s strangest town — Trona.

The drive begins, innocuously enough, with a tour of the gleaning San Fernando Valley, before taking a sharp turn across the Traverse mountain range. Past the mountains, you’ll reach the expansive bedroom communities of Palmdale and Lancaster, where the LA metropolis spills out into the vast Mojave desert. Some 30 miles later, the highway weaves outside the empty streets of California City, the state’s most famous failed megacity. The landscape thins out shortly afterwards. For the next 60+ miles there’s little more than the odd ranch or abandoned mining shack. But right as the highway drops down from the high desert into what looks to be Death Valley, the GPS informs you that there’s another 50 miles before the national park boundaries.

Searles Valley in spring. Photo from my friend’s Flickr

You look ahead, and there’s one more town to go.

There’s imposing industrial buildings belching out white smoke, a strong smell of sulfur in the air, neighborhoods of dilapidated and partially burned houses, all surrounded by a blindingly empty salt flat. You have reached Trona, California — the Detroit of the desert.

The history of Trona is one that is repeated in virtually every mining town in the Mojave. Minerals are found in the late 19th century. A mine springs up shortly afterwards. Soon, a small town catering to the miners rises from the desert sand. But as the 20th century comes and goes, the mines close, people move out, and the town becomes completely abandoned.

Except Trona never did go through those last fateful steps. The mine never closed, and the town, though it has certainly seen better days, is alive and well.

Photo by Irfan Khan of the LA Times

In fact, Trona has plenty of amenities that many desert towns lack. There’s multiple gas stations, at least one of which still serves fresh fried chicken sandwiches. There’s a decently well kept rest area, complete with flush toilets and working sinks. The local grocery store is open daily and has all the basic staples one might expect for a rural supermarket. And there’s seven churches, a small museum, two highly rated restaurants, and a brand new high school is under construction. I even hear the internet isn’t half bad.

Writing about Trona truly is like writing an obituary for a living person.

Logic and reason would suggest that a town like Trona shouldn’t exist. Even fans of the remote locale, among whom I count myself, can admit the place doesn’t have much going for it except for raw, industrial-grade ore and a ready-made backdrop to Hollywood movies. There’s no hotels, resorts, notable hiking trails, or even historical buildings to draw in tourists. The whole town’s economy revolves around the one remaining mine, in a recipe that has proven disastrous for hundreds of mining towns before it. But despite it all, Trona persists.

Trona’s admirable resilience hasn’t stopped internet keyboard warriors from passionately ripping into the place, though. Simply look up the town’s name on Reddit, and you’ll be met with dozens of roasts, insults, and armchair speculation on what could possess someone to live out here.

One user introduces the town as follows:

For those that have never visited Trona: imagine the smell of Satan’s armpit coupled with the weather of hell, and Trona is much worse than that.

Another adds:

I have driven through Trona. It is the scariest town I have ever seen. Everything is decrepit. Meth and opiate zombies wandering around. It was spooky to get gas in broad daylight.

Another user recounts a story of passing through the town:

The town itself is creepy as fuck. The people are very The Hills Have Eyes-esque. One friendly gas station attendant with three missing fingers once offered me a 10-gallon bucket full of burritos that he had made that morning. He was outwardly nice, but I got a very murdery vibe off of him.

And the insults keep coming:

Oh man, Trona is like the biggest shit hole in all of California

Was driving through Trona once. There was a sign that said Trona’s kids just say no to drugs. I looked at my wife and said They need to supply the drugs to the kids

Trona looks like an abandoned martian colony or something, makes Barstow look like civilization

Trona is a shithole. If you want worse, try Darwin.

How exactly did such a universally maligned town come into being? Why is it so rundown? How has it managed to hold on for so long? And why on earth do I like the place so much?

Trona’s history begins in the 1860s with the discovery of rich borax deposits in Searles Valley by the famed Western explorer, John Searles, after whom the area is named. Already in 1873, his San Bernardino Borax Company established a small mill on the edge of the expansive salt flats, before it was unceremoniously burned to the ground by the local Indians. Undeterred, Searles rebuilt the mill in 1878, the same year his original structure was destroyed, and the mining operations there have run uninterrupted ever since.

Undated historical photo of Trona. At the time, most work was done with the help of burros

By the early 1900s, Searles Valley skyrocketed to become among the most important mining towns in the country, with the discovery of potash in the flats. The chemical was used as an invaluable crop fertilizer at a time when the United States was embroiled in the first world war, and in urgent need to feed both itself and a now-starving Europe. The American Trona company, named after a carbonate mineral in the area, officially founded the town in 1914. At that point in its history, Trona was a company town through and through, and its workers were paid solely in the company’s own currency. Somewhat ironically, the American Trona Company actually specialized in the production of potash, and trona itself was of secondary importance. The company was subsequently renamed “American Potash Company,” but the town’s name stuck.

Production continued to ramp up through World War II, with new potash deposits being opened up by blasting the valley with military-grade explosives. The chemicals extracted from the resulting ditches were in turn used to manufacture more explosives for the military. In 1943, the town was even awarded an Army-Navy “E” award in recognition of its utility for the war effort. Many of Trona’s largest and most sophisticated factories were constructed at around this time, many of which continue to dominate the town’s skyline and remain in use today.

By all accounts, the mid-20th century was Trona’s golden era. The town mushroomed to a population of between 6,000 to 8,000, making it among the largest towns in the entire Mojave, and completely dwarfing the then-small farming community of Ridgecrest. It was the cultural and economic hub of the region, boasting a modern movie theater, bowling alley, hospital, and a large pool. Trona also had a score of restaurants and bars, banks, large administrative offices, a weekly newspaper, and an independent school district.

Trona around 1950

The town’s fortunes began to shift by the late 1960s, when the US Navy expanded its operations at China Lake, outside of Ridgecrest. Ridgecrest itself would soon grow to become larger than Trona, and slowly but surely, many of the workers at the Trona plant began to move there. The town would experience another hit in 1974, when the mining company changed hands, and the new owners opted to drastically downsize operations. More devastating layoffs would occur in 1982, when a third of the entire workforce lost their jobs.

By the late 1980s, Trona began to resemble its current, somewhat dilapidated state.

It was around this time that Trona began to register as a place of interest for reporters and intrepid tourists. The LA Times alone have published close to a dozen pieces on the town, with many focusing on its high school’s infamous dirt football field. Supposedly the soil was too high in salt to support green grass, and astroturf would blow away in the notoriously windy Mojave. The solution was to simply paint some lines on a dirt field, and call it a day. Apparently it helps give the the home team a morale advantage over the visitors. Similarly, the Trona golf course is mostly bare sand, with only one small elevated spot with green grass.

Trona’s biggest challenge, however, was still ahead of it.

In 2019, the area was hit by a record-breaking, multi-day earthquake on the 4th and 5th of July. The quake, which registered as a 7.1 on the Richter Scale, was the most powerful that the state has experienced since the 1990s, and cost over 5 billion in damages. Roads buckled, houses violently shook, street lamps fell over, grocery products came crashing down their shelfs, and virtually no buildings escaped with no damage. One death is even attributed to the disaster. A local man was working on his car, and the quake shook the vehicle so hard that it fell off its stands, fatally crushing him.

In short, the quake shook both Ridgecrest and Trona to their core, and Trona would never fully recover, despite emergency aid from both the state and federal governments. The community was even temporarily isolated from the outside world when rifts opened up on the only highway into town. In the weeks after the disaster, many of the already struggling businesses closed up shop, and the residents that remained were robbed of the opportunity to even drink their sorrows away at a bar without leaving town. Some even chose to set their homes alight and cashout on insurance payouts, and many of those burned-out houses remain to this day.

Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley, reposted by SBSun

Trona’s fall from grace would also bring new residents to the remote community, and, perhaps for the first time in its history, they were less than welcome. The town became infamous as a hotbed of meth labs and crackhouses, and petty crime, especially burglary and arson, exploded. Drug addicts and manufacturers alike flocked to the area, attracted by some of the lowest property values in the state and minimal police presence. As a San Bernardino sheriff explained to the LA Times, the closest jail to Trona is a whopping 100 miles away, in Barstow, and at times there is only one officer serving the whole town, making the place verging on the ungovernable. Outside of the increase in crime, drug addicts have also made their presence felt by stripping many of the abandoned homes of anything of value, and leaving nothing but empty shells.

Stripped house in Trona. Photo from my friend’s Flickr

Yet despite Trona’s obviously rundown appearance, it has a certain rugged charm that can be found almost nowhere else. The very same lack of policing that contributes to high crime rates also makes Trona’s residents free in ways that most people can only dream of. A few years back, I remember speaking to a long-time resident while waiting in line at the Ridgecrest DMV. He told me that, despite being in his late 30s, he had never gotten his license and this would be his first time trying. Apparently he has been driving without a license or insurance since he was a teenager, and in a place like Trona, one can easily get away with that for years without anyone raising an eyebrow. Continuing, he recalled a time he was driving into town during the 2019 earthquakes, speeding down the highway at over 100 miles per hour, when he felt a small bump. The next morning he checked out the spot, and, sure enough, the highway had split in two, and, had he been going the speed limit, he would have certainly fallen right into the crevasse.

On another occasion, I met a man hiking in a canyon right outside of town. He enthusiastically told me that there was gold in the mountains, and when he finds the motherload, it’ll make him rich. He wasn’t alone — there’s at least one small active gold mine in the area worked by just a handful of people.

I couldn’t help but think how remarkable it is that this dead-end town — seemingly the antithesis of urban, progressive California — is in fact truer to the state’s founding spirit than any other. The hunt for gold had brought people out to this inhospitable valley over 150 years ago, and it may well continue to entice adventurous prospectors in another 150 years.

Original photo of small-scale gold mine outside of Trona

For now, however, the greatest goldmine that Trona has is simply its location — countless Hollywood movies have been shot in the alien landscape immediately surrounding the town, often in exchange for a hefty fee. Star Trek, the Planet of the Apes, and the 2000 movie “Dinosaur” were all filmed near the otherworldly Trona Pinnacles, along with dozens of lesser known franchises. Some movies have even centered on the town itself, including the 2012 film “Just Add Water,” “Lost Lake,” from that same year, and the 2004 film simply named “Trona.” Just last year, Will Ferrell starred in a movie that revolved around his long-time friend purchasing a house in Trona, and it, too, was shot on location.

As for the mining operations, they’re still going strong. The Trona mining company itself keeps changing hands — last I heard, they were owned by an Indian multinational corporation — but it shows no signs of shutting its doors anytime soon.

Also unchanged are many of the negative opinions on the Detroit of the desert. But if you can get over the rotten egg smell, I think anyone can see the beauty of this living relic of California history, and feel its beating pioneer heart.

Photo from my friend’s Flickr