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.