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 Key System, an interurban private transit system, which operated in Oakland and the East Bay with a terminus in the San Francisco Transbay Terminal. Early life Francis Marion Smith was born in Richmond, Wisconsin in 1846. He went to public schools and graduated from Milton Academy in Milton, Wisconsin. Early mining career At the age of 21, he left Wisconsin to prospect for mineral wealth in the American West, starting in Nevada. In 1872, while contracting to provide firewood to a small borax operation at nearby Columbus Marsh, Smith discovered a rich supply of ulexite at Teels Marsh in Mineral County, Nevada, east of Mono Lake, near the town he would found ten years later, Marietta, Nevada, while looking westward from the upper slopes of Miller Mountain where the only nearby trees were growing. Eventually, to satisfy his curiosity, Smith and two assistants visited Teels Marsh and collected samples, that proved to assay higher than any known sources for borate. Returning to Teels Marsh, Smith and his helpers staked claims and, started a company with his brother Julius Smith, and established a borax works at the edge of the marsh to concentrate the borax crystals and separate them from dirt and other impurities. Smith had a house in Tonopah, Nevada. 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 for across the Great Basin Desert from Marietta to the nearest Central Pacific Railroad siding in Wadsworth, Nevada. The Borax King Death Valley Smith then acquired properties at Columbus Marsh and Fish Lake. In 1884, Smith bought out his brother. While reduced operations continued at Teels, Smith now focused his energies and borax mining in Death Valley and at the 20 Mule Team Canyon mine in the Amargosa Range to the east. In 1890, upon William Tell Coleman's Harmony Borax Works financial overextension, he acquired Coleman's borax works and holdings in western Nevada, the Death Valley region, and in the Calico Mountains near Yermo, California. Smith then consolidated them