Smith was born in Maine and learned the printer's trade, working on papers in Detroit and with Horace Greeley in New York.
He came to California during the 1849 Gold Rush, and remained there until the Terry-Broderick duel, an affair he lamented deeply as an intimate of both parties.
He then went to The Dalles in Oregon, where he operated a pack train, and prospected gold in the Fraser River valley of British Columbia.
Unsuccessful in that venture, he located a claim on the east bank of Osoyoos Lake, near today's Oroville, Washington, in 1859, where he opened a trading post.
He may have averted a massacre in 1891 when the frenzied citizenry at the camps of Ruby and Conconully feared an imminent Indian attack.