Furnace Creek, a spring-fed stream flowing into Death Valley, was home to Native Americans for centuries before lost Forty Niners found it. In 1881, Aaron Winters discovered borax nearby and sold his claims and water rights to William Tell Coleman, who built Greenland Ranch here to support borax workers and twenty-mule teams. Francis Marion Smith later acquired the site for his company, which became US Borax, and renamed it Furnace Creek Ranch; borax was produced in the valley until 1927, and the ranch opened to guests in 1932. In 1954, Harry Gower and Ann Rosener established a museum in the valley's oldest structure, built about 1883. That building had been constructed in 1883 by F.M. "Borax" Smith, founder of the Pacific Coast Borax Co., in Twenty Mule Team Canyon as an office, bunk house, and ore checking station for miners at the Monte Blanco deposits, and it was moved here in 1954 to serve as a museum. In 1969, Fred Harvey Company purchased the Death Valley properties from US Borax.