Francis Marion Smith

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Francis Marion Smith bigraphy, stories - American businessman

Francis Marion Smith : biography

February 2, 1846 – August 27, 1931

Francis Marion Smith (February 2, 1846 – August 27, 1931) (once known nationally and internationally as "Borax Smith" and "The Borax King" George Earlie Shankle "American nicknames; their origin and significance" 2nd Ed. 1955 pg. 417 ISBN 0-8242-0004-7, ISBN 978-0-8242-0004-6Hildebrand, GH. (1982) Borax Pioneer: Francis Marion Smith. San Diego: Howell-North Books. p xiii ISBN 0-8310-7148-6) was an American miner, business magnate and civic builder in the Mojave Desert, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Oakland, California.

Frank Smith created the extensive interurban public transit Key System in Oakland, the East Bay, and San Francisco.

Legacy

Supporting his first wife’s desire to provide homelike accommodations for orphaned girls, Smith used part of his fortune to finance the construction and operation of 13 residential homes. Each home had a house mother selected by Mrs. Smith, who was directed to provide as close to a normal homelife for the girls under her care as possible. In addition to the homes, Smith provided a social hall called The Home Club, that was located on the site of the current Oakland High School. Only the stairway from Park Blvd. remains today. The homes continued in operation for many decades, and several are still standing. As the State took over providing for orphans, the funds in the Mary R. Smith Trust were redirected to providing nursing education for qualified young women.

The Western Railway Museum’s archives wing is named for Francis Marion "Borax" Smith. The museum, located in Solano County, California on California State Route 12, includes several operating street cars and transbay trains that operated on the Key System lines in Oakland and adjacent cities on the east side of San Francisco Bay.

The Francis Marion Smith Park, on land from a portion of his former estate donated by he and his wife, is on Park Boulevard in Oakland.

In Death Valley, Smith Mountain, a peak in the Amargosa Range, is named in his honor.Hanna, Phil Townsend. "The dictionary of California land names". 1951. Page 309

On Shelter Island, NY, Smith Street and Smith Cove are named for him.

"Borax" Smith is a character in the historical fiction novel Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold (ISBN 0-7868-8632-3) and the main character in Jack London’s novel Burning Daylight was partially based on his life.Hildebrand, GH. (1982) Borax Pioneer: Francis Marion Smith. San Diego: Howell-North Books. p 1 ISBN 0-8310-7148-6

Last mining

In 1913, Smith became financially overextended and had to turn over his assets to creditors who refused to extend new loans. After winning a lawsuit to protect his wife’s interest in a silver mine in Tonopah, Nevada, he acquired mineral rights to a large section of Searles Lake in the Searles Valley over the Panamint Range from Death Valley, in northern San Bernardino County, California. However, finding a profitable way to convert the extensive lake brines into borax and other important commercial mineral salts products proved elusive for roughly a decade.

In the meantime, he outbid the new owners of his company for the rights to a rich borax discovery in Nevada’s Muddy Mountains, in Callville Wash, under present day Lake Mead. He called his operations there the Anniversary Mine as the claims were acquired on the anniversary of his marriage to his second wife. The profits from this claim provided the capital to develop the Searles Lake deposits when a young chemist, Henry Helmers, discovered a profitable process for refining the lake brines into marketable products. He built the Trona Railway, a Short-line railroad, to ship the products to the Union Pacific Railroad connection at Searles, California. The operation and railroad is now under Searles Valley Minerals.

Other accomplishments

Smith married Mary Rebecca Thompson (Mollie) and settled in Oakland, California in 1881 where in 1896 he acquired an estate and constructed a mansion, across the street from the MacArthur and Park Blvd. location of Oakland High School’s current campus, where he lived until 3 years prior to his death in 1931. After Mollie died in 1905 at age 55, he remarried in 1906 to Evelyn Kate Ellis, a Shelter Island socialite.