I was born in Missouri in 1859 to prosperous parents who owned 70 acres, slaves and a general store. When the Civil War broke out, my father enlisted and became a captain but was captured by Union soldiers and sent to prison camp.
Park City Museum researcher
John Daly’s heath declined in 1917 and he moved with his wife to Los Angeles, where he lived at 310 South Gramercy Place until his death in October 1927.
Park City Historical Society & Museum, Himes-Buck Digital Collection
Many of Park City’s famous mine owners shared several similarities: a lack of extensive formal education, their consuming ambition, the rural poverty of their childhoods, and their diligent self-education. All of them acquired mentors along the way who were attracted to their eager willingness to learn. John J. Daly is exemplar of this model.
Born Oct.15, 1853, in Morris, Illinois, his father, listed in the census as a day laborer, died in 1861, and John Daly was orphaned before age 11 when his mother died in 1863. To survive, he took a job as a cabin boy on a steamship plying the upper Missouri and got as far as Ft. Benton when he left that job. He was just a kid of 14 with only two years of formal schooling.
The Daly West Mine head frame stands within a fence behind the Montage Deer Valley. Geologist Brian Buck will talk about the significance of the head frame and the overall history of the Daly West Mine, including the 1902 explosion that left more than 34 miners dead, during a virtual History Speaks Lecture on Jan. 6 hosted by the Park City Museum.
Park Record file photo
Park City’s Daly West Mine, located near where the Montage Deer Valley now stands in Empire Canyon, was a premium example of lead and silver mining operations during its heyday in the mid- to late-1890s, says geologist Brian Buck.