Trona sits in the high desert of San Bernardino County, on the western edge of Searles Lake, a dry lake bed in the Searles Valley southwest of Death Valley. It is an unincorporated community whose name comes from the mineral trona, and its history is bound up with the chemistry of the lake bed beneath it. Borax was discovered at Searles Lake by John W. Searles in the 1860s, and the famous 20-mule teams hauled the mineral across the desert to the coast. In the early 1900s, mining companies built plants at the site to recover soda ash, potash, borax, and sodium sulfate from the lake, and the town grew up around those operations. Mining remains the backbone of the local economy. Searles Valley Minerals, which produces borax and other industrial minerals, is the town's largest employer and has kept Trona a working company town in the modern era. The surrounding desert is stark and dramatic: the Trona Pinnacles, a cluster of tufa spires rising from the lake bed, were designated a National Natural Landmark and lie within the California Desert National Conservation Area. State Route 178 runs through the valley, linking Trona east toward Death Valley and west toward Ridgecrest, the nearest sizeable town and a regional employment and shopping center. Trona is remote by any measure. Services are limited, and residents often travel to Ridgecrest for shopping, medical care, and other needs, but that remoteness is part of the appeal for those drawn to the open desert, dark night skies, and the peculiar beauty of the Searles Valley landscape. Housing is modest and largely tied to the mining workforce, and the community's identity remains inseparable from the minerals beneath it. It is a small, close-knit place defined by mining, geology, and the vastness of the surrounding Mojave.