Minor Cooper Keith was born on January 19, 1848 in New York City, New York, United States, the son of Minor Hubbell Keith, a successful lumber merchant. His mother, Emily Meiggs, was a sister of Henry Meiggs, who built the famous Callao, Lima & Oroya Railroad in Peru.
Minor Cooper Keith was educated in private schools until sixteen years of age.
Keith started to earn his own living at various employments. His real career began when in 1871 he went to help his elder brother, Henry, who through Meiggs had received a contract from the Costa Rican government to build a railroad from the Caribbean to San José. When Henry died in 1874, Minor Keith, then twenty-six years old, was left in charge of the undertaking. By 1882, against almost unbelievable difficulties, he carried construction to the Rio Sucio, seventy miles inland. He was obliged to spend the next three years in London to find financial backing to complete his road, Costa Rica having gone bankrupt and defaulted in her promised payments. With the aid of a loan of £1, 200, 000 he completed the line to San José in 1890.
Meanwhile, Keith had become completely identified with the country. Banana plantations, which he had set out near Limon in 1873 as an experiment, prospered and expanded so rapidly that by 1890 they surpassed his completed railroad in value and furnished most of its freight. While in London he organized the Tropical Trading & Transport Company to take over these banana interests, to provide transportation for the increasing shipments to the United States, and to manage the chain of stores which he had established up and down the coast, at which merchandise was traded for native products of the region. He also acquired control of the expanding banana plantations around Santa Marta, Colombia, by an arrangement with the Colombian Land Company. Soon a similar deal with the Snyder Banana Company of Panama gave him large interests there. By 1899 he dominated the banana business of Central America, and in that year he engineered a consolidation of his interests with those of his chief rival, the Boston Fruit Company--whose plantations were all in the West Indies--to form the United Fruit Company. He left the management of this powerful corporation in the hands of Andrew W. Preston, accepting only the vice-presidency, and turned to new interests.
As his banana developments had created an economic empire with its own peculiar civilization in the eastern lowlands of Central America, Keith now began a period of railroad building which was to influence the old Spanish civilizations of the plateaus as well. By 1908 he completed a railroad from Puerto Barrios on the Caribbean to Guatemala City, the United Fruit Company following his line in the Guatemalan lowlands with their banana plantations. His purchase of the Western Guatemala Railroad, between Guatemala City and the Pacific, gave him an inter-coastal system, and he increased the value of this by extending a branch which in 1911 reached the Mexican frontier and connected with Mexican lines.
In 1912 he organized the International Railways of Central America, of which he remained president until 1928. This corporation took over his Guatemala lines and also a line in Salvador which he was building from the port of La Unión toward the capital, San Salvador. After surmounting innumerable political and financial complications he completed in 1929 a long and difficult connecting line between the Guatemalan and Salvador railroads, thus uniting a system totaling 800 miles in length and valued at $80, 000, 000. His dream of continuing the railroad south to the Panama Canal was interrupted only by his death.
Keith had a great many other interests in the region and at his death was the best-known North American in Central America. He was more cordially welcomed than most North Americans because he was a creator, rather than an accumulator, of wealth. His estate at his death was valued at only $3, 336, 507. His unrivaled collection of Aztec gold images and ornaments and a large collection of Central American pottery were bequeathed to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Minor Cooper Keith was one of the prominent men of both Costa Rican and railroading history. He was distinguished for his development of the railroad infrastructure and banana business in Central America. He was the founder of the United Fruit Company, one of America's great overseas private enterprises, and a chain of general stores in the United States.
In 1883 Keith married Cristina, daughter of José Mario Castro, former president of Costa Rica.
