Daggett, California
(Daggett depot — Santa Fe era site)
Nestled in the heart of the Mojave Desert, Daggett, California is small today, but it once sat at the crossroads of rails, mines, and desert freight. Its story follows a familiar Mojave pattern — sudden importance, hard-earned infrastructure, then a long, stubborn afterlife.
Long before the town was platted, the Mojave River corridor functioned as a travel-and-water line through the desert. Trails and later wagon routes threaded this river corridor, and the Camp Cady military presence (downriver) reflects the wider push to secure movement on these desert lines during periods of conflict.
RAILROAD BIRTH: CALICO-ERA BOOMTOWN LOGISTICS
Daggett formed in the early 1880s when silver discoveries in the Calico Mountains drove a surge of people, freight, and speculation. A railroad station was established here in 1882 as the Atlantic & Pacific (Santa Fe system) pushed its transcontinental line across the Mojave, and Daggett quickly became the practical railhead for Calico and the nearby camps. The place was soon renamed for California Lieutenant Governor John Daggett (spring 1883). Plans to make Daggett the main rail hub faded, and the primary yards ultimately shifted to Barstow as the region’s railroad center of gravity changed.Daggett’s role was practical: it served as a supply and shipping point for Calico and nearby camps. In 1888, a narrow-gauge ore line — widely remembered as the Calico Railroad / Waterloo Mining Railroad — tied the Calico district into Daggett-area milling and rail connections, reinforcing Daggett as a desert transportation hinge.
BORAX AND THE BIG FREIGHTERS
When silver waned, borax carried the next chapter. The famous “20-mule team” story is best told in two phases: the original Death Valley hauling made the teams famous, and later the operation shifted to Borate (near Calico), with heavy wagons hauling borax to the Daggett railhead from the early 1890s until 1898. In 1898, the Borate and Daggett Railroad replaced the mule teams, ending the most cinematic part of the work.HIGHWAY ERA AND A LONG AFTERLIFE
In the automobile age, the old desert roads mattered again. National Old Trails Highway traffic and then Route 66 kept Daggett on the map as a service stop even after the mining peaks had passed. The town never turned fully ghost — it simply got quieter, like so many Mojave rail-and-mine junctions once the big money moved on.LANDMARKS THAT STILL TELL THE STORY
Daggett’s surviving buildings still carry the working fingerprints of the boom years. The Stone Hotel remains the town’s most iconic remnant of early prominence. The Daggett Garage traces back to an 1880s railroad-and-mining–era shop building (often described locally as a rail-related repair facility); during World War II it served as a mess hall for troops guarding nearby railroad bridges, and after the war it became the long-running Fouts brothers’ auto shop.Daggett’s cemetery and scattered structural remnants are the quiet ledger entries of the place — not a theme-park past, but the real desert balance sheet of transport, extraction, and endurance.
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the town of Calico
Southern Pacific Railroad
borax
10 stamp mill
Mojave River
20-mule teams
Furnace Creek Ranch
Death Valley
Francis Marion "Borax" Smith
Harmony
San Bernardino County
National Old Trails
Route 66
Southern Pacific
Santa Fe
Borax
Chronology
Daggett Weather
Desert Market
Inspection station residence - 2013
Daggett Garage
Daggett Ditch
Stone Hotel
Pioneer Cemetery
Minneola
Borate & Marion
Desert Market
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Alf's Blacksmith Shop
Calico Mining History
A railroad named the Borate & Daggett was laid into Mule Canyon in 1898. ...
Daggett Misc. Gallery
Trans-Mojave Desert Railroad
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Daggett. Here is an old historical town, older than Calico. In 1880 to the railroad was constructed through the community and it was named after Lieut. Gov. John L. Daggett the following year. When silver and borax mining activities ceased, it became dormant. In 1908 it was the locale for Western movies. Strategically located on Highway 66 and served by the Santa Fe and Union Pacific, it is obvious that Daggett is enjoying a surging rebirth, all the more pronounced because of the close proximity to the US Marine Corps Supply Center and the Daggett Airport.
~ Heritage of the Mojave River Valley