Portrait of Marcus Daly

People/magnate, prospector

Marcus Daly

Marcus Daly (1843–1900), magnate, prospector, from Ireland. Linked to copper, silver.

The lucky break

With backing from George Hearst, Ali Haggin and Lloyd Tevis he developed the Anaconda copper mine in Montana from 1881.1,2

Legacy

Managed the Anaconda Copper Mining Company from 1881 to the late 1890s and built the Bitterroot Stock Farm, sawmills and a town to feed his smelters. The finding aid spells his birth county as Craven; it is presumably Cavan.1,2

Story cards

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Where next

People

Partner ofGeorge HearstHearst and two Californians bankrolled the Irish foreman who built Anaconda.1Worked hereWaldemar LindgrenIn 1884 he designed smelter furnaces for Marcus Daly's Anaconda.3

Mines

FoundedButte copper districtA Walker Brothers foreman turned copper king.1

Sources

  1. Marcus Daly family papers, 1883-1996 (Mss 619), Historical Note Archives West (Orbis Cascade Alliance); University of Montana Archives and Special Collections
  2. File pages and licence metadata for portraits (via the Commons imageinfo/extmetadata API) Wikimedia Commons
  3. Hall of Fame: Waldemar Lindgren Mining Foundation of the Southwest

Pictures on this page: MarcusDaly.jpg, not recorded on the file page (Public domain); George Hearst.jpg, Edouart & Cobb (Public domain); Waldemar Lindgren cph.3b21646.jpg, Clinedinst, Washington, DC (Public domain).

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Chuquicamata from the ISS by Alexander Gerst (ESA), CC BY-SA 2.0. Pictures: Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0).