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No. 1 U. S. producer is American Potash and Chemical Corp., partly British-owned. Its plant at Searles Lake, in the Mojave desert in California, is a monument to U. S. chemical progress. In 1926 American Potash and Chemical, taking over a property three times bankrupt since 1896, began to research the problem of deriving potash commercially from its abundant borax properties. Directed by famed Chemist Dr. John Edgar Teeple (died: March 23, 1931), it perfected methods for producing potash—two tons of potash for each ton of borax.
This company's difficulty was that as it increased potash production it had to sell more borax. To accomplish this, borax prices were halved between 1926 and 1930 —when all other prices were skyrocketing. The price cut worked and borax exports rose from 14,000 tons in 1926 to 80,000 tons in 1929. Today, American Potash and Chemical and its two competitors can readily increase their capacity to supply all U. S. potash needs.
*Used in soaps, chrome tanning, optical glass, electroplating, photography and, above all, fertilizer. Originally potash was obtained from wood ashes. Now it is obtained more economically from mineral deposits or extracted from very salty water such as the Dead Sea being highly soluble, it is not found in surface deposits except in deserts.