Dial Hopes to Buy a Bit of History From Borax

The company that makes Dial soap plans to buy a resonant piece of California heritage--the cleaning products with the 20-mule-team logo so closely linked with the history of borax mining in Death Valley.

Dial Corp. of Phoenix said Wednesday that it had agreed in principle to purchase the 20 Mule Team division of United States Borax & Chemical Corp. of Los Angeles, whose Inyo County mine in Boron remains the largest producer of industrial borates outside the Iron Curtain.

The division has annual revenue of about $30 million, selling such familiar brands as Borateem bleach, Boraxo powdered hand soap and 20 Mule Team Borax, a multipurpose cleanser.

United States Borax, a British-owned company that is the descendant of the pioneer mining firms that developed Death Valley’s rich borate industry in the 1880s, will retain ownership of the 20 Mule Team trademark, according to company spokesman Clay L. Lorah. The mules will continue to appear on the firm’s industrial products, primarily the borates used in insulation, auto bodies, cooking utensils, lenses, fuels, pottery, glues and photographic chemicals.

But Dial’s parent company, Greyhound Corp., will acquire the right to use the name and the legendary mule-team logo for 20 Mule Team Borax, Lorah said.

Lorah said the pending sale in no way represented a mortgaging of United States Borax’s birthright by its British parent, RTZ Corp., whose diversified mining holdings produce a score of minerals from aluminum to zinc.

“I suspect those products have an association with our early beginnings,” Lorah acknowledged. “But U.S. Borax will go on.”

California historians and history buffs, however, were disappointed to learn of even a little corporate horse-trading in the mule-team heritage.

“I never dreamed that U.S. Borax would ever sell that,” said Edwin L. Rothfuss, superintendent of the Death Valley National Monument. Some of the most popular tourist sites and museum exhibits at the monument celebrate the mule teams’ short-lived role in carrying 36 1/2-ton loads of borates from Death Valley to a railhead in Mojave.

“That’s been such a part of their history for 108 years,” Rothfuss said.

The mule teams’ heyday was 1883-88, when they plied the 165-mile route almost constantly. But it was not until after 1893, when salesman Stephen Mather joined the then-Pacific Coast Borax Co., that the mules became the centerpiece of the company’s advertising campaigns and packaging.

Back then, the firm did not talk much about a fact widely known to historians. The “20-mule” teams generally consisted of 18 or 19 mules and one or two horses. “Eighteen mules wasn’t as catchy as 20 mules,” Rothfuss said.

Mather went on to become the first director of the National Park Service. The mule teams remained a powerful marketing tool for United States Borax.

They made a celebrated appearance at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, followed by a national tour promoting the company. In 1937, they paraded at the opening ceremonies for the Golden Gate Bridge. Three years later, they crossed the nation again--mainly by railroad--to draw attention to a Wallace Beery film, “Twenty Mule Team.”

And from 1952 to 1970, the mules were part of the backdrop for “Death Valley Days,” the United States Borax-produced television Western series whose host in the mid-1960s was actor Ronald Reagan.

“It’s part of the whole history of mining that made California the great, wealthy state that it is,” said Father Michael E. Engh, a history professor at Loyola-Marymount University.

To the degree that the 20-mule-team image becomes unhitched from United States Borax in the pending sale, it becomes part of a general muddling of corporate identity exemplified by the 20 Mule Team division’s new owner, Greyhound Corp.

The Phoenix company does not operate bus lines. Greyhound sold its bus operations last year to a group of Texas investors who continue to operate a transcontinental bus system under the Greyhound name--and who themselves purchased their leading competitor, Trailways.

Greyhound’s Dial Corp. division used to be known as Armour-Dial. Greyhound purchased Armour Food Co. in the early 1970s, but it sold Armour’s processed meat and frozen food businesses to Con-Agra in 1983. Both companies continue to use the Armour name on retail products.

Greyhound also owns the Purex line of laundry and household products.

Company officials declined to comment Wednesday on how extensively they plan to use the 20 Mule Team name.

“The history of the company is that we value brand names,” said Nancy K. Dedera, a Greyhound spokeswoman. “We put a high value on brand names.”