Frank Walker

Frank Walker (March 29, 1843 – August 26, 1916) was a lumberman, a contractor, a builder, a city official and an inventor in the Pacific Coast of the United States and British Columbia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Personal

Walker was born on March 29, 1843, in Ancaster, Ontario, or in Kincardine, Ontario, the son of Canadians Francis Walker and Elizabeth Hudson. He married again, to Sarah Gibson of Texas, who died on October 1, 1910. He had one child, Frank Harvey. He also worked on a street railway in Los Angeles. He built the courthouse and the waterworks in Tombstone, Arizona.

He was an inventor, and he patented several devices, including a solar heater, which was "used extensively in Southern California." During that time, he "is said to have been instrumental in preventing the Street Railway Corporation from getting the celebrated freight-carrying franchise, which would have allowed freight cars to run on some of the principal streets of the city." he withdrew from that race in favor of Le Grand Parker. Meredith P. Snyder was nominated and was elected.