playa in San Bernardino county, southern California, U.S. Lying to the west of the southern edge of Death Valley National Park, it formed part of a Pleistocene drainage network linking a number of now-arid basins. Certain minerals constituting the playa's evaporites are relatively uncommon elsewhere; trona and hanksite are examples. The dry lake was named for the brothers John and Dennis Searles, who discovered borax there in 1863 and began working the rich deposits of minerals in 1873. There is now a historic landmark, recalling the discovery, in the nearby town of Trona.