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Francis Marion Smith
Francis Marion Smith (February 2, 1846 – August 27, 1931) (once known nationally and internationally as "Borax Smith" and "The Borax King" ) 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, which operated in Oakland, the East Bay, and San Francisco. Early mining career Francis Marion Smith was born in Richmond, Wisconsin in 1846. He went to the public schools and graduated from Milton College. At the age of 21, he left Wisconsin to prospect for mineral wealth in the American West, starting in Nevada. In 1872, while working as a woodcutter, he discovered a rich supply of ulexite at Teel's Marsh, near the town he would found ten years later, Marietta, Nevada. He staked a claim, started a company with his brother Julius Smith, and established a borax works at the edge of the marsh to concentrate the borax crysta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Borax
Borax is a salt (ionic compound), a hydrated borate of sodium, with chemical formula often written . It is a colorless crystalline solid, that dissolves in water to make a basic solution. It is commonly available in powder or granular form, and has many industrial and household uses, including as a pesticide, as a metal soldering flux, as a component of glass, enamel, and pottery glazes, for tanning of skins and hides, for artificial aging of wood, as a preservative against wood fungus, and as a pharmaceutic alkalizer. In chemical laboratories, it is used as a buffering agent. The compound is often called sodium tetraborate decahydrate, but that name is not consistent with its structure. The anion is not tetraborate but tetrahydroxy tetraborate , so the more correct formula should be . Informally, the product is often called sodium borate decahydrate or just sodium borate. The terms tincal "tinkle" and tincar "tinker" refer to native borax, historically mined from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teel's Marsh
Teel's Marsh is a playa in Nevada, United States. It was the site of "Borax" Smith's first borax Borax is a salt (ionic compound), a hydrated borate of sodium, with chemical formula often written . It is a colorless crystalline solid, that dissolves in water to make a basic solution. It is commonly available in powder or granular form, ... works at Marietta, Nevada in 1872, and became the start of his operations that soon became the largest borax operation in the world.Hildebrand, GH. (1982) Borax Pioneer: Francis Marion Smith. San Diego: Howell-North Books. pp 18-21. References {{reflist Landforms of Mineral County, Nevada ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harmony Borax Works
The Harmony Borax Works is located in Death Valley at Furnace Creek Springs, then called Greenland. It is now located within Death Valley National Park in Inyo County, California. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. Origin and twenty-mule teams After discovery of Borax deposits here by Aaron and Rosie Winters in 1881, business associates William Tell Coleman and Francis Marion Smith subsequently obtained claims to these deposits, opening the way for "large-scale" borax mining in Death Valley. The Harmony operation became famous through the use, from 1883 to 1889, of large twenty-mule teams and double wagons which hauled borax the long overland route to the closest railroad in Mojave, California. During the summer months, when it was too hot to crystallize borax in Death Valley, a smaller borax mining operation shifted to his Amargosa Borax Plant in Amargosa, near the present community of Tecopa, California. The Harmony Works remained under Coleman's operation un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Tell Coleman
William Tell Coleman (1824–1893) was an American pioneer in the settlement of California. Early life William Tell Coleman was born in Cynthiana in Harrison County, Kentucky on February 29, 1824. He was educated at St. Louis University in Missouri. Committees of Vigilance In 1849, Coleman arrived in California and eventually settled in San Francisco, where he engaged in the shipping and commission business. Coleman was a leading figure in both the 1851 and 1856 Committees of Vigilance, which usurped civic power in order to drive out the Democratic Party machine and ostensibly to establish law and order. Under Coleman, these committees ignored ''habeas corpus'', conducted secret trials, lynchings, and deportations, and raised a militia. The 1856 Committee of Vigilance disbanded, but after transferring power to the new People's Party, which soon merged with the Republican Party and controlled San Francisco until 1867. Shipping After opening a branch in New York City, Coleman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amargosa Range
The Amargosa Range is a mountain range in Inyo County, California and Nye County, Nevada. The range runs along most of the eastern side of California's Death Valley, separating it from Nevada's Amargosa Desert. The U-shaped Amargosa River flows clockwise around the perimeter of the range, ending below sea level in the Badwater Basin. The mountain range is named after the Amargosa River, so-named for the Spanish word for bitter because of the bitter taste of the water. In order from north to south, the Grapevine Mountains (including the range's highest point, Grapevine Peak), the Funeral Mountains, and the Black Mountains form distinct sections. Many of Death Valley National Park's most well-known features, such as Zabriskie Point Zabriskie Point is a part of the Amargosa Range located east of Death Valley in Death Valley National Park in California, United States, noted for its erosional landscape. It is composed of sediments from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried up 5 m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley in Eastern California, in the northern Mojave Desert, bordering the Great Basin Desert. During summer, it is the Highest temperature recorded on Earth, hottest place on Earth. Death Valley's Badwater Basin is the point of lowest elevation in North America, at below sea level. It is east-southeast of Mount Whitney — the highest point in the contiguous United States, with an elevation of 14,505 feet (4,421 m). On the afternoon of July10, 1913, the National Weather Service, United States Weather Bureau recorded a high temperature of 134 °F (56.7 °C) at Furnace Creek, California, Furnace Creek in Death Valley, which stands as the Highest temperature recorded on Earth, highest ambient air temperature ever recorded on the surface of the Earth. This reading, however, and several others taken in that period are disputed by some modern experts. Lying mostly in Inyo County, California, near the border of California and Nevada, in the Great ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbus Marsh
Columbus Marsh is a playa in Nevada, United States. William Troup (or Troop) discovered cottonball borax at the site in 1870 or 1871. Joseph Mosheimer and Emile K. Stevenot, who operated one of the borax concentrating plants at Columbus, hired Francis Marion Smith to cut wood for their plant on nearby Miller Mountain in the Candelaria Hills. Smith subsequently discovered borax himself at Teel's Marsh Teel's Marsh is a playa in Nevada, United States. It was the site of "Borax" Smith's first borax works at Marietta, Nevada Marietta, Nevada, was a town in Mineral County, Nevada. It is now a ghost town. History The area was extensively prospe ..., where he had sufficient financial success to expand and acquire the borax works at Columbus himself in 1880.Hildebrand, GH. (1982) Borax Pioneer: Francis Marion Smith. San Diego: Howell-North Books. pp 16-21. References {{reflist Landforms of Mineral County, Nevada ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wadsworth, Nevada
Wadsworth is a census-designated place (CDP) in Washoe County, Nevada. The population was 834 at the time of the 2010 census. It is part of the Reno– Sparks Metropolitan Statistical Area and located entirely within the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation. The town was named for General James S. Wadsworth, a Civil War general killed during the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. It was given this name by Leland Stanford of the Central Pacific Railroad as a favor to General Irvin McDowell, whom Wadsworth had served under during the Civil War. Geography Wadsworth is located at (39.635550, -119.283175). According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , all land. Demographics As of the census of 2000, there were 881 people, 328 households, and 225 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 237.7 people per square mile (91.7/km). There were 360 housing units at an average density of 97.1 per square mile (37.5/km). The racial makeup of the C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Pacific Railroad
The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a rail company chartered by Pacific Railroad Acts, U.S. Congress in 1862 to build a railroad eastwards from Sacramento, California, to complete the western part of the "First transcontinental railroad" in North America. Incorporated in 1861, CPRR ceased operation in 1885 when it was acquired by Southern Pacific Railroad as a leased line. Following the completion of the Pacific Railroad Surveys in 1855, several national proposals to build a transcontinental railroad failed because of the energy consumed by political disputes over slavery. With the secession of Southern United States, the South in 1861, the modernizers in the Republican Party (US), Republican Party controlled the US Congress. They passed Pacific Railroad Acts, legislation in 1862 authorizing the central rail route with financing in the form of land grants and government railroad bond, which were all eventually repaid with interest. The government and the railroads both shared ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Basin Desert
The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range. The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife Fund, and the Central Basin and Range ecoregion defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and United States Geological Survey. It is a temperate desert with hot, dry summers and snowy winters. The desert spans large portions of Nevada and Utah, and extends into eastern California. The desert is one of the four biologically defined deserts in North America, in addition to the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts. Basin and range topography characterizes the desert: wide valleys bordered by parallel mountain ranges generally oriented north–south. There are more than 33 peaks within the desert with summits higher than , but valleys in the region are also high, most with elevations above . The biological communities of the Great Basin Desert vary accordi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it is the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. ''Scientific American'' is owned by Springer Nature, which in turn is a subsidiary of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. History ''Scientific American'' was founded by inventor and publisher Rufus Porter (painter), Rufus Porter in 1845 as a four-page weekly newspaper. The first issue of the large format newspaper was released August 28, 1845. Throughout its early years, much emphasis was placed on reports of what was going on at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, U.S. Patent Office. It also reported on a broad range of inventions including perpetual motion machines, an 1860 device for buoying vessels by Abraham Lincoln, and the universal joint which now can be found ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
