Death Valley Junction Historic District

Death Valley Junction is a planned company settlement in the Mojave Desert, built by the Pacific Coast Borax Company from 1923 to 1925 to house its operations, visitors and employees. Los Angeles architect Alexander Hamilton McCulloch designed sixteen of the major buildings in a simplified Spanish Colonial style, using adobe walls, flat roofs and crisp, simple openings. Most are low buildings grouped around a large plaza and linked by a continuous adobe wall. The complex includes a hotel, dormitories, a store block with post office, a recreation hall, a two-storey superintendent's residence and rows of cottages. Two corner towers mark the entry to the plaza. The settlement grew from the borax trade, which relied on the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad. When mining shifted elsewhere, the company converted part of the dormitory complex into a hotel in 1932. The district is valued for its adobe construction, its formal layout and its role in the borax industry. The recreation hall later became the Amargosa Opera House.