| Francis Marion Smith |
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| 1846 births | |
| smith, francis marion | |
| 1931 deaths | |
| american entrepreneurs | |
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Francis Marion Smith (aka '''"Borax" Smith''' and the '''"Borax King"''') ( February 2 , 1846 - August 27 , 1931 ) was an American Business Magnate and civic builder of Oakland, California . Smith Mountain in Death Valley is named after him. Smith was born in Richmond, Wisconsin in 1846. At the age of 21, he left Wisconsin to prospect for mineral wealth in the American West . In 1872, while working as a woodcutter, he discovered a rich supply of Ulexite at Teel's Marsh , Nevada . He staked a claim, started a company with his brother Julius, and established a Borax Works at the edge of the marsh to convert ulexite into Borax . In 1877, '' Scientific American '' reported that the Smith Brothers shipped their product in a 30-ton load using two large wagons with a third wagon for food and water drawn by a 24-mule team over a 160-mile stretch of desert between Teel's Marsh and Wadsworth, Nevada , some six years before similar Twenty Mule Team s were introduced into Death Valley, California. In 1884, Smith bought out his brother. He then gained control of all major borax production in western Nevada. In 1890, he acquired William Tell Coleman 's borax holdings in Death Valley and consolidated them with his own to form the Pacific Coast Borax Company . Smith's company then established and aggressively promoted the '' 20-Mule-Team Borax '' Trademark , which was named after the Twenty Mule Team s that had been used to transport borax out of Death Valley by Coleman's company. He also formed the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad to ship his borax. Smith settled in Oakland, California in 1881. There, he built America’s first Reinforced Concrete building, which was a borax refinery on an island in San Francisco Bay . He also created the Key System , which was the Bay Area ’s first regional railway and ferry system. Francis Marion Smith died in Oakland in 1931 at the age of 85. He is buried in the city's Mountain View Cemetery . "Borax" Smith is a character in the historical fiction novel ''Carter Beats the Devil'' by Glen David Gold (ISBN 0786886323). REFERENCES
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