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 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.