are currently mined. 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, near Callville Wash, north of present-day Lake Mead and south of Muddy Mountain. He called his operations there the West End Chemical Company and the claim 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. His first efforts in 1918 to recover borax were unsuccessful. However, a young chemist, Henry Hellmers, that he hired to work at the Anniversary Mine discovered a profitable process for refining the lake brines into marketable products and by 1926 had a plant operating at Searles Lake. In 1927 the plant was expanded to also produce soda ash. The West End Chemical Company plant in Searles Valley used the Trona Railway, a Short-line railroad, to ship the products to the Union Pacific Railroad connection at Searles, California. The Trona Railway was founded by the American Trona Company in 1913. The operation of the railroad is now under Searles Valley Minerals. Note: There is no evidence or reason to believe that Francis Marion Smith was involved in the building of the Trona Railway. Oakland years Smith married Mary Rebecca Thompson Wright (1846-1905, known as Mollie) in 1875. After living in Nevada for a few years they settled in Oakland, California in 1881. Following Mollie's death in 1905 at age 59, he remarried in 1906 to Evelyn Kate Ellis (1877-1957). In 1882 Smith began accumulating parcels of land in Oakland that became the estate called Arbor Villa. He and Mollie moved into Oak Hall, the mansion they had built on the estate, in about 1895. This residence was furnished with a pipe organ built by