Twenty-mule teams were teams of eighteen mules and two horses attached to large wagons that transported borax out of Death Valley from 1883 to 1889. They traveled from mines across the Mojave Desert to the nearest railroad spur, away in Mojave. The routes were from the Harmony and Amargosa Borax Works to Daggett, California, and later Mojave, California. After Harmony and Amargosa shut down in 1888, the mule team's route was moved to the mines at Borate, east of Calico, back to Daggett. There they worked from 1891 until 1898 when they were replaced by the Borate and Daggett Railroad. The wagons were among the largest ever pulled by draft animals, designed to carry 10 short tons (9 metric tons) of borax ore at a time. History In 1877, six years before twenty-mule teams had been introduced into Death Valley, Scientific American reported that Francis Marion Smith and his brother had shipped their company's borax in a 30-ton load using two large wagons, with a third wagon for food and water, drawn by a 24-mule team over a stretch of desert between Teel's Marsh and Wadsworth, Nevada. The twenty-mule-team wagons were designed to carry of borax ore at a time. The rear wheels measured high, with tires made of iron. The wagon beds measured long and were deep; constructed of solid oak, they weighed empty; when loaded with ore, the total weight of the mule train was . The first wagon was the trailer, the second was "the tender" or the "back action", and the tank wagon brought up the rear. With the mules, the caravan stretched over . Due to their rugged construction, no wagon ever broke down in transit on the desert. A water tank was added to supply the mules with water en route. There were water barrels on the wagons for the teamster and the swamper. Water supplies were refilled at springs along the way, as it was not possible to carry enough water for the entire trip. The tank water was used at dry camps and water stops. The June 1940 issue of Desert Magazine confirms that the primary water tank was 1200 U.S. gallons. This detail is also given in "The History Behind the Scale Model". An efficient system of dispersing feed and water along the road was put in use. Teams outbound from Mojave, pulling empty wagons, hauled their own feed and supplies,