Austin Hall

Austin Hall once stood on this site as the much loved focal point of the Trona community. Built in 1912, the unique structure had one-foot-thick concrete walls and 45 arches on three sides, and its patio center and oleander trees provided a cooling shelter from the blazing heat. Early employees were housed and fed in its spacious rooms, and eventually all the town’s businesses were housed there. Its patio became an open-air theatre with an adjoining pool hall, barber shop, post office, library, grocery and department store, and a telegraph office with a switchboard for the single phone line into Trona. The building was named for Stafford W. Austin, the court-appointed receiver for the troubled California Trona Company, who guided the company through its evolution from the John Searles-owned San Bernardino Borax Mining Company to the eventually successful American Potash and Chemical Corporation. The building was removed in 1965.

Searles Valley, California · United States