Trona is a town near Ridgecrest, where I grew up.
Mineral extraction is its principle industry, work formally undertaken by North American Chemical Corporation before being purchased by IMC Chemicals; ownership currently goes under the name Searles Valley Minerals which, I suppose, is synonymous.
Trona was one of the few places someone from Ridgecrest (pop. 24,927) could feel superior for not living in. When I was growing up, Trona's air had a strong sulfuric odor similar to rotten eggs. I've never actually smelled a rotten egg but that's what everyone said. Were I to smell one today, it would surely remind me of Trona.
Driving through Trona, one can't help but notice the many burned-out shells of homes. Few of these arson victims have been rebuilt or torn down. New homes, as far as I can tell, aren't built. It seems obvious enough that Trona isn't a place where someone lives unless they must. Those homes still occupied seem consigned to a process of slow deterioration; it feels somehow inevitable they too will burn to the ground.
There is a specific air of desolation in Trona--of a ghost town biding its time. I only get this feeling piecemeal in Ridgecrest although I can't say we are less desperate. Visitors from Los Angeles (or even Palmdale) undoubtedly experience similar feeling of emptiness upon entering or, more likely, driving past Ridgecrest. We are a military town and, indeed, only a base closing away from economic apocalypse.
I took these photographs a few weeks ago.
Like a lot of photographs, there's a fascination with destruction and decay. Urban blight and war zones make great photo ops. Perhaps the attraction of such images derives simply from their contradiction to humanity as it is organized around us: cities, industry, the constant march toward progress. In such images we see our human creations, at last, overcome by nature and reduced to relics. Without the scaffolding of society, they show in some way what the world really is.
Desert dwellers, it seems to me, frequently identify with the Israelites of old. Biblical stories about the expulsion from Eden and the coming End Times become immediately more authentic. I remember, for instance, the parable about the scattering of seed in Israel and the difficulty of such seed prospering and bearing fruit. The desert (in this view) is as inhospitible to life as the world is to the human soul.
For someone having lived so long in this area, I've only recently learned the meaning of "trona." It is, in fact, an ash-gray sodium compound--the word derived from the now discarded Arabic term for native salt, tron. I assume trona was once mined in Trona and, if so, its name has an exactness that mirrors its economic function.
Incidentally the name Ridgecrest was decided by citizen committee. One of the losing contenders was the perhaps more descriptive "Crumbville." But, in the end, Ridgecrest seems the appropriate name, pleasantly vague and giving no sense of what to expect; it could be the name of any place.
July 02, 2005
*Rewritten/Edited: September 07, 2005
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