Harry Rosenberg grew up near the hottest place on Earth-Death Valley-in a very unusual dwelling: a red caboose. His father repaired bridges for the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad, which hauled ore from remote mines. During the Depression, the Rosenbergs traveled from washout to washout across a fiery land prone, paradoxically, to devastating floods of the Amargosa and Mojave Rivers. No other place on Earth was better suited to forge a curious boy into a metallurgist who would spend his life unlocking the vast potential of a difficult, new metal-titanium. In Fire and Forge, author Kathleen L. Housley tells Rosenberg's life story-working as a miner, having a chance meeting with a geologist studying Death Valley, earning a PhD from Stanford, gaining patents for aerospace alloys, and founding a company that manufactures the purest titanium in the world. This biography captures the essence of a man whose work as a metallurgist left an impact on the world, but it also communicates Rosenberg's love for his roots. No matter how far he traveled, no matter the number of his successes, he never really left the Mojave Desert and the Amargosa River-it still flows through his veins. Fire and Forge A Desert Railroad, a Wonder Metal, and the Making of an Aerospace Blacksmith By Kathleen L. Housley, Harry Rosenberg iUniverse LLC Copyright © 2013 Kathleen L. Housley All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4917-0790-6 Contents Introduction, vii, Acknowledgments, xi, PART I: DEATH VALLEY, INVISIBLE RIVERS, AND A RUN-DOWN RAILROAD, 1 The Middle of Nowhere, 3, 2 The T & T Railroad, 21, 3 Greek Tragedy, Mojave Backdrop, 47, 4 Growing Up in the Desert, 71, 5 The End of the Line, 99, 6 Working in the Hole, 123, 7 The Noonday Mines, 137, PART II: STRANGE NEW WORLD, STRANGE NEW METAL, 8 Leaving the Amargosa, 181, 9 The Wonder Metal Titanium, 205, 10 In Search of Deeper Understanding, 231, 11 A Turbulent Time, 249, 12 High-Purity Titanium and the Alta Group, 265, 13 Those Who Keep Running, 283, Appendix I: Patents, 297, Appendix II: Publications, 299, Selected Bibliography, 303, Photo Credits, 311, Endnotes, 313, Index, 333, CHAPTER 1 The Middle of Nowhere Until he was six years old, Harry Rosenberg lived in a red cabooseon the run-down T & T Railroad, which crossed the Mojave Desertto the east of Death Valley—a hard, elemental landscape acrosswhich the hot wind blew with abrasive force, funneling down the barrenmountains and over the salt wastes. It was during the Great Depression, butlife had always been so tough in the desert that it was difficult for thingsto get worse. T & T stood for the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad that ranfrom Beatty, Nevada, through the arid Amargosa Valley south to Ludlow,California, where it connected with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa FeRailroad. It also intersected with the Union Pacific Railroad in a desolatespot called Crucero, meaning in Spanish a "crossing." The T & T rail line, built by the Pacific Coast Borax Company, beganoperations in 1907 primarily to carry borax from the mines in the DeathValley region. The famous twenty-mule teams, capable of pulling thirtytons fully loaded, had stopped hauling ore eighteen years earlier in 1889;since then, no effective means of transportation had been found to taketheir place. No matter how valuable the ore, whether it was borax, talc, orlead (the only exception being gold), without a railroad, it was prohibitivelyexpensive to ship it out of such a remote area, and many a man had gonebankrupt trying. Even with a railroad, the desert exacted a high toll inhuman life, particularly during the construction phase when workersquit faster than they could be hired. One journalist for the Goldfield News likened the summer working conditions to a "death pit." It was far betterwhen the daytime temperature was 50 degrees Fahrenheit in Januaryinstead of 120 degrees in July. However, a train must run year-round, soits crews must work year-round, regardless of the weather. The T & T came into existence in a boom time when gold strikes drewhordes of men into the Mojave Desert with the promise of easy fortunes.Industry moguls, such as Francis Marion Smith, known as the "BoraxKing," and William Andrews Clark, known as the "Copper King," builttheir own rail lines to reap even greater rewards. But just as the T & T wasnamed after two areas it never reached—the gold fields in Nevada and thePacific Coast—so also it never turned the huge profits Smith expected. TheT & T showed a profit for only four years out of its thirty-three years ofservice (1907–40). Clark's rail line, running from Las Vegas to Goldfield,did even worse, ending operations in 1918. In the preface to his book Death Valley and the Amargosa: A Land ofIllusion , Richard E. Lingenfelter writes that "it is a land of the deluded andthe self-deluding, of dreamers and con men. Even its hardest facts are tingedwith aberrations." That statement is certainly true of the p