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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. Image File history File links Francis_marion_smith. ...
Image File history File links Francis_marion_smith. ...
February 2 is the 33rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...
1846 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ...
August 27 is the 239th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (240th in leap years), with 126 days remaining. ...
1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link is to a full 1931 calendar). ...
It has been suggested that Industrialist be merged into this article or section. ...
Oakland, founded in 1852, is a major city on the east side (also called East Bay) of San Francisco Bay in Northern California in the United States. ...
The Panamint Range, Death Valley, and the Black Mountains as seen from the Space Shuttle (NASA image) Death Valley is a valley located in east-central California southeast of the Sierra Nevada range in the Great Basin, comprising much of Death Valley National Park. ...
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. Richmond is a town located in Walworth County, Wisconsin. ...
A typical archetype, the cowboy, in the Wild 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 teams were introduced into Death Valley, California. Ulexite (NaCaB5O9·8H2O) (hydrated sodium calcium borate hydroxide) is a mineral occurring in silky white rounded crystalline masses or in parallel fibers. ...
Official language(s) None Capital Carson City Largest city Las Vegas Area - Total - Width - Length - % water - Latitude - Longitude Ranked 7th 286,367 km² 519 km 788 km 0. ...
Borax is a somewhat generic name used to describe a number of closely related minerals or chemical compounds: anhydrous borax (Na2B4O7) borax pentahydrate (Na2B4O7 · 5H2O) borax decahydrate (Na2B4O7 · 10H2O) The borax term is most usually used to describe borax decahydrate. ...
Scientific American is a popular-science magazine, published monthly since August 28, 1845, making it the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. ...
Wadsworth is a census-designated place located in Washoe County, Nevada. ...
Twenty mule teams were teams of eighteen mules and two horses attached to large wagons that ferried borax out of Death Valley from 1883 to 1889. ...
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 teams 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. The Pacific Coast Borax Company was founded in 1890 by the American borax magnate Francis Marion Smith. ...
Twenty-mule-team Borax is a brand of cleaner manufactured by the U.S. soap firm Dial Corporation. ...
A trademark or trade mark is a distinctive sign of some kind which is used by a business to uniquely identify itself and its products and services to consumers, and to distinguish the business and its products or services from those of other businesses. ...
Twenty mule teams were teams of eighteen mules and two horses attached to large wagons that ferried borax out of Death Valley from 1883 to 1889. ...
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. Reinforced concrete at Sainte Jeanne dArc Church (Nice, France): architect Jacques Dror, 1926–1933 Reinforced concrete (ferro concrete) is concrete in which reinforcement bars (rebars) or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the material that would otherwise be brittle. ...
San Francisco Bay, San Pablo Bay, and the Golden Gate The San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining of approximately forty percent of California, flowing in Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean. ...
The Key System (or Key Route) was a company that provided mass transit in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, Richmond, Albany and El Cerrito in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area from the 1900s until 1960 when the system was sold to a newly formed public...
USGS Satellite photo of the San Francisco Bay Area. ...
Francis Marion Smith died in Oakland in 1931 at the age of 85. He is buried in the city's Mountain View Cemetery. Mountain View Cemetery is a cemetery in Oakland, California. ...
"Borax" Smith is a character in the historical fiction novel Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold (ISBN 0786886323).
References
- Hildebrand, GH. (1982) Borax Pioneer: Francis Marion Smith. San Diego: Howell-North Books. (ISBN 0831071486)
- Smith, Francis Marion. (Unpublished) circa 1925. Autobiographical Notes on His Early Life.
See also The Key System (or Key Route) was a company that provided mass transit in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, Richmond, Albany and El Cerrito in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area from the 1900s until 1960 when the system was sold to a newly formed public...
East Bay Township, Michigan East Bay (California) is a subregion of the San Francisco Bay Area East Bay (Rhode Island) is a region of Rhode Island This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
An interurban streetcar line or interurban, also called a radial railway in Canada, is a streetcar line running between urban areas. ...
External links - Teel’s Marsh: Birthplace of a Legend
- The Borax Museum
- Francis Marion Smith's tomb
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