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Stephen Mather - Time Line
Mather Time Line - Sources at bottom of page
1846 - Francis Marion Smith, who will be known as "Borax Smith," is born in Richmond, Walworth County, Wisconsin
1867 – Francis Smith leaves Wisconsin to prospect for mineral wealth in the West. He starts in Nevada. While working as a woodcutter he discovers a supply of Ilexite at Teel's Marsh, near what would become Marietta, Nevada ten years later. Smith stakes a claim, starts a company with his brother Julius, and establishes a borax works to concentrate the borax crystals and purify them.
July 4 - Stephen T. Mather born in San Francisco to Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wakeman Mather.
1869 - Thomas Thorkildsen born in Wisconsin, the son of an immigrant Danish lumberjack.
1877 – Smith Brothers are shipping their product using mule teams from Marietta to Wadsworth, Nevada to reach the Southern Pacific RR.
1883 - Smith's Pacific Coast Borax Company then established and aggressively promoted the 20-Mule-Team Borax brand and the trademark, brand and the trademark, which was named after the Twenty Mule Teams that Coleman had used, from 1883 to 1889, to transport borax out of Death Valley to the closest railroad in Mojave, California. The idea came from Smith's Advertising Manager, Stephen Mather.
1884 - Smith buys out his brother, reduced operations continue at Teels Marsh, Smith now had focused his energies and borax mining in Death Valley [[California and at the 20 Mule Team Canyon mine in the Amargosa Range to the east.
1887 – Mather graduates with a Bachelor of Letters degree from the University of California at Berkeley. Begin job as a journalist at the New York Sun.
1889 - Thorkildsen was working for Pacific Coast Borax (later U.S. Borax)
1890 – January 6 – Horace Marden Albright born in Bishop, CA, the son of a miner.
Francis Smith William Tell Coleman's Harmony Borax Works financial over-extension, he acquired and his borax works and his holdings in western Nevada, the Death Valley region, and in the Calico Mountains near Yermo, California. Smith consolidated them with his own holdings to form the Pacific Coast Borax Company.
1893 - Joseph W. Mather, Stephen Mather’s father, working as the administrator for Pacific Coast Borax’s operation in New York City. Pacific Coast Borax, owned by Francis Marion Smith, aka the “Borax King” or “Borax Smith,” was the world’s largest borax mining operation of the day. With his father’s influence, Stephen Mather accepted a position as the advertising manager for Pacific Coast Borax. Originates campaign for “20-Mule Team Borax.” Profits for company quadruple the next year.
Smith commissioned one of America’s first Reinforced Concrete buildings, the Pacific Coast Borax Company refinery, in Alameda, California. The architect was Ernest L. Ransome.
1894 - Mather is working in Chicago with Thomas Thorkildsen, the man who would ultimately become his partner. Mather was Thorkildsen’s friend and boss at Pacific Coast Borax, and the two worked together for four years.
1898 - Thorkildsen forced to resign when he was caught backdating order forms after price increases were implemented. He had done this as a favor to friends and preferred customers. Smith was infuriated with him, but, as Thorkildsen stormed out, he announced he was going to start up his own borax company. Smith’s response was to return the threat by stating that if Thorkildsen did such a thing, Smith would, in essence, bury him. Thorkildsen set off for Los Angeles and plunged his life savings of $17,000 into a borax mine on Frazier Mountain in Ventura County.
Mather secretly becomes president of the new company, formed with Thorkildsen, supported it financially and used his industry contacts with Pacific Coast Borax to advance the interests of the Frazier Mountain mining operation. Mather’s hidden alliance with Thorkildsen was successful, and the Frazier Mountain mining operation became very lucrative.
1902 – Mather is institutionalized for 'depression.'
1904 - Mather terminated his employment with Smith and joined Thorkildsen at Frazier Mountain. By then, Thorkildsen had been running the day-to-day operations of the successful venture for six years, and although he held the title of President Mather ran the bulk of the processing and sales of the product.
1905 - In Spring, 1905, two gold prospectors, Louis Ebbenger and Henry Shepard, happened upon a rich deposit of borax in Tick Canyon. They lacked the resources to mine and process the mineral themselves and subsequently sold their claim to Thorkildsen for $80,000. Since the Frazier Mountain site was nearly mined out by this time, it couldn’t have happened at a better time. The Thorkildsen-Mather Borax Company was still in business but it was now marketed under a different name, the Sterling Borax Company.
Stephen Mather joins 56 members of the annual outing, including 15 women, made the ascent of Mt. Rainier, on the first High Trip outside California.
1908 – Mine is producing $500,000 in gross profit from approximately 18 – 20 thousand tons of borax.
Within three years, the mine was operational and began producing approximately eighteen to twenty thousand tons of marketable borax a year. This translated to an annual gross profit of approximately $500,000, which in which in 1908, was a huge fortune.
1911 - The mine was operational and began producing approximately eighteen to twenty thousand tons of marketable borax a year. This translated to an annual gross profit of approximately $500,000. An offer to purchase the Sterling Borax Mine is received from Francis “Borax” Smith. Thorkildsen quickly accepted Smith’s price of $1.8 million as well as a concession to keep Thorkildsen and Mather on the payroll for an additional ten years.
The two men walk away with what today would be approximately $500 million today.
1912 – Horace Albright graduates from Berkeley and accepts a job with Professor Adolph Miller, who has accepted an appointment become the assistant to the secretary of the Interior in 1913.
1913 - While still at Berkeley for his graduate year, Albright studied the law of mines and waters under Professor William E. Colby, and accompanied Colby to a meeting of the Sierra Club where met John Muir. Albright and Colby will become close friends. Colby tells him Muir and he are best friends and he is also the Muir's right-hand man. Albright is persuaded the Hetch Hetchy should be granted to San Francisco. The next year, now living in Washington D. C., Albright's employer, Miller Adolph C. Miller was appointed a member of the first Federal Reserve Board on August 10, 1914. Albright continues working for the Secretary of the Interior, Franklin K. Lane and finishes law school in D. C.
1914 – Stephen Mather takes a trip to Yosemite and joins the Sierra Club.
1915 – January 2 – Mather is appointed head of the National Parks.
June - Mather grants an exclusive monopoly to Joseph Desmond, a supplier to construction camps, including Hetch Hetchy. The Desmond Company would be in direct competition with Curry's camps. To help it get started on a good financial footing, Mather promised a long lease for the company, to allow it to install bars and sell liquor in the park, and to turn over army buildings for immediate extra accommodations.
Laurence Harris (owner of a tent and outdoor equipment firm) and A. B. C. Dohrmann (a hotel supply company owner), and probably others as well, would be in a position to make quite a profit for their companies too, so they were chosen to sell stock in the new company.He had emphasized to his guests that all California would benefit by travel to the national parks in the state, but new and finer facilities would have to be built to encourage visitation. Together, the men formed the Desmond Park Service Company and agreed to put up $250,000 to get it going, to buy out the Lost Arrow and Yosemite Park Company, and to construct more accommodations. Mather agreed to invest in it too. This self-dealing was criminal and ignored the better claims of those who had been running businesses in Yosemite for many years.
July 14 – Mather Party assembles in Visalia. California for trip into the mountains. A dinner party is held at the Palace Hotel by local businessmen. The food served is Mexican. Stephen T. Mather, Horace Albright, Mark Daniels, Robert Marshall from the Department of the Interior. Burton Holmes, lecturer, world traveler, and author and his cameraman, Frank Depew; Emerson Hough, novelist, writer, ardent conservationist, Gilbert S. Grosvener, Director, National Georgraphic Society; Peter C. Macfarlane, novelist, writer for Saturday Evening Post; Congressman Frederick H. Gillett, Massachusetts, ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee; Ernest O. McCormick, Vice President, Southern Pacific Rail Road; Henry Fairfield Osborne, President of the American Museum of Natural History and the New York Zoological Society, paleontologist for the Canadian and U. S. Geological Surveys. Ben M. Maddox, owner and publisher of the Visalia Daily Times, general manager of the Mt. Whitney Power Company, and leader in the development of Sequoia National Park.; George W. Stewart, Visalia attorney and editor who organized the publicity campaign to create the Sequoia and General Grant National Parks; Clyde L. Seavey, member of the California Board of Control (finances); Henry Floy, electrical engineer from New York City, Mather's brother-in-law; F. Bruce Johnstone, Chicago attorney and a close friend of Mather's; and Samuel E. Simmons, Sacramento physician and brother-in-law of Robert Marshall. U. S. Park Ranger, Frank Ewing, along as chief packer, a Chinese cook for the U. S. Geological Survey, Ty Sing, and his assistant, Eugene.
The chapter on the Mountain Party is available online, (Chapter 7 - Mather Mountain Party) (The book is available from Amazon.com, used.) At the end of the chapter the men with Mather plan out, mostly endorsing, Mather's vision for the Parks. However, the 'vision' enunciated in words are at variance with reality of Mather's actions. Albright covers for Mather, ignoring his multiple violations of the rights of those involved.
1917 – January - Mather suffers emotional break-down which lasts until 1919. Albright is appointed interim head. Both men, Albright and Bob Yard, cover for him. Yard, as publicity director, is using his position to push an agenda which originated among Mather's friends, many of whom owned large corporations.
1919 – Bob Yard leaves the NPS because he is disgusted with having to report to Albright and because the supplemental payments from Mather have been exposed.
1929 – January - Mather resigns due to another episode of emotional breakdown, then thought to be manic-depression.
1930 - January 22 – Stephen T. Mather dies.
See Stephen Mather Bio Page for the way the NPS ignores Mather's criminal behavior.
Notes: Wikipedia
20 Mule Team Borax is a brand of cleaner manufactured by the U.S. soap firm Dial Corporation.[1] The product is named after the twenty-mule teams that were used by William Tell Coleman's company to move borax out of Death Valley, California, to the nearest rail spur between 1883 and 1889.
Francis Marion Smith acquired Coleman's holdings in 1890 and consolidated them with his own to form the Pacific Coast Borax Company. After the mule teams were replaced by a new rail spur, the name 20 Mule Team Borax was established and aggressively promoted by Pacific Coast Borax to increase sales.
Stephen Mather, son of J.W. Mather, the administrator of the company's New York office, persuaded Smith to add the name 20 Mule Team Borax to go with the famous sketch of the mule team already on the box. The 20-mule team symbol was first used in 1891 and registered in 1894. In 1988, just over 20 years after the acquisition of U.S. Borax by Rio Tinto Group, the Boraxo, Borateem, and 20-Mule Team product lines were sold to Dial Corporation by U.S. Borax.[2]
Francis Smith – Wikipedia
Other Sources:
Heritage Junction Dispatch, November – December 2010
March 12, 2000 Cecelia Rasmussen
"Creating the National Park Service, The Missing Years," by Horace M. Albright and Marian Albright Schenck
More Information of Interest: