Consulting geologist and surveyor Franklin Mac Murphy was born on December 27, 1898 in Wheaton, Minnesota. He studied at Columbia University, the University of Arizona, and the University of California, Los Angeles, completing his graduate studies in 1930 at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California.

David Huntsman was the owner of Kane Springs Ranch located on the Upper Muddy River in the Moapa Valley of Clark County, Nevada. The Kane Springs Ranch, as it came to be called, was known for its large orchard and mining operations.