The Billie Mine (also known as Billie I and Billie II) is a former underground borate mine located in the Furnace Creek Mining District of Death Valley National Park, Inyo County, California. Situated on the eastern slopes of the Black Mountains overlooking Death Valley, the mine’s surface structures—including the prominent steel headframe, shaft collar, support buildings, and waste rock dumps—are positioned just outside the park boundary along the paved Dante’s View Road, approximately 1.5 miles northwest of the historic ghost town of Ryan and 12 miles southeast of Furnace Creek. However, the rich borate ore body itself extends underground into park lands, with the mine portal offset about 1,500 feet west on Bureau of Land Management property to comply with environmental regulations under the Mining in the Parks Act of 1976.
The site sits in a stark, arid landscape typical of Death Valley: barren alluvial fans sloping down from rugged, basalt-capped ridges, dotted with creosote bush and sparse desert vegetation. The ore body, embedded in the Miocene-Pliocene Furnace Creek Formation, consists primarily of calcium borates such as colemanite, along with probertite and ulexite. Geologically, the deposit is lens-shaped, striking northeast with a southeast dip of 20–40 degrees, averaging 700 feet wide, 3,700 feet long down-dip, and 150 feet thick. Mining involved deep vertical shafts (reaching depths of around 1,200 feet) and long-hole stoping methods with backfilling to maintain stability, leaving tall, narrow pillars critical to the underground structure.
Today, the abandoned mine features a towering headframe silhouetted against the vast valley panorama, evoking the industrial intrusion into this remote wilderness. Visitors driving to Dante’s View often pause for photos, but the site is gated and off-limits—mines in the park are hazardous due to unstable shafts, toxic tailings, and potential collapses.
The Billie Mine’s history is intertwined with Death Valley’s long borax legacy, but it represents a modern chapter amid growing conservation efforts. Borate deposits in the Furnace Creek area were known since the late 19th century, exploited by the Pacific Coast Borax Company at nearby sites like the Lila C. and Widow mines near Ryan. However, after discovering richer sodium borates (kernite) at Boron in 1926–1927, operations in Death Valley largely ceased as companies shifted to more profitable locations.
Interest in the Billie deposit revived in the mid-20th century. In 1958, the Kern County Land Company staked claims and conducted drilling. Development accelerated in the 1970s: after the Mining in the Parks Act of 1976 restricted new claims and imposed strict environmental reviews, valid pre-existing operations like Billie were allowed to proceed with mitigation. Construction began in 1977 under a partnership that became the American Borate Company (initially involving Owens Corning Fiberglass and Texas United, later fully Owens Corning).
The mine reached ore in 1980 and became fully operational shortly after, extracting high-quality colemanite crystals (some large and collectible) alongside probertite and ulexite. Ore was trucked to processing plants in Dunn Siding, California, or Lathrop Wells, Nevada. For over a decade following the 1994 expansion of Death Valley to national park status, the Billie Mine was the only active mine within park boundaries, operating under rigorous National Park Service oversight to minimize surface disturbance.
Production continued into the early 2000s, but economic factors, declining demand, or resource depletion led to closure in 2005—marking the end of all mining in Death Valley National Park. In 2011, American Borate donated related patented claims (including parts of the Billie and nearby Boraxo sites) to the NPS, further securing the area’s protection.
The Billie Mine stands as a poignant reminder of Death Valley’s mining era: born from persistent exploration in a protected landscape, it bridged historic borax booms with modern environmental constraints, ultimately yielding to preservation in one of America’s most extreme and iconic wildernesses.