UtahRails Mining Men - D. C. Jackling
Index For This Page
This page was last updated on February 27, 2026.
(The focus of this page is brief biographical notes of the men that made the mining industry in Utah so successful. Also to establish a timeline using sources not previously readily available.)
As important as the everyday wage worker was to the history of mining in Utah, it was several men with experience, vision and charisma who made the mining industry in Utah so successful. These men developed the networks of mining engineers and financiers to develop the undeveloped or partially developed mining claims to become giant organizations that made money for their shareholders, and in many cases, kept the mines as a decent place to work.
Daniel C. Jackling
March 13, 1956
From the San Francisco Chronicle, March 14, 1956.
Colonel Daniel Cowan Jackling, a world-famed mining engineer and a fabulous, free-spending figure in the West for many years, died at 7 o'clock last night at his Woodside estate. He was 86.
Jackling had been ill since Christmas, suffering from circulatory ailments. He retired from active business life in 1942, but kept a San Francisco office to handle his personal financial affairs.
The key achievement in the colonel's spectacular mining and financial career was the development of a practical method of profitably extracting copper from low-grade ore bodies through mass production.
On the strength of that development, he founded the Utah Copper Co. in 1903 and proceeded to build a huge personal fortune.
In World War II he handled the Nation's explosives program, winning a Distinguished Service Medal for his services as a full-time dollar-a-year man. He also received a host of other honors, including some of the top awards in the field of mining engineering.
He moved his headquarters from Salt Lake City to San Francisco before World War II.
The remodeling of an entire floor of the St. Francis Hotel for his personal use and his flamboyant comings and goings aboard the luxurious private railroad car, Cyrus, and the "palatial steam yacht," Cyprus, filled newspaper columns.
About a year after the death of his estranged first wife, Colonel Jackling, by this time a multi-millionaire, married Virginia Jolliffe, a member of a socially prominent San Francisco family.
Born in Missouri in 1869, he graduated from the Missouri School of Mines with a degree in metallurgical engineering in 1892. He taught metallurgy and chemistry there for a year, before working as a miner and assayer in Colorado's Cripple Creek district.
His first major accomplishment came in 1896 when his successful experiments on metallurgical treatment of low-grade gold ores were largely responsible for the Consolidated Mercur Gold Mines in Utah.
A few years later came his big copper discovery, and its first exploitation at Bingham, Utah, where other companies had refused to operate because of low-grade ore.
Within a dozen years, he was reported to have an income from copper interests alone of up to $1,000,000 a year. He became the central figure in the so-called Porphyry group of copper properties, holding executive positions in many of them.
He was also a stockholder and director of many other enterprises, including the Chase National Bank, the Sinclair Oil Corporation, railroads and hotels. At the time of his retirement in 1942, he was in charge of all western holdings of the vast Kennecott mining interests.
He belonged to many social clubs in Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, including the Pacific Union, Bohemian and Press and Union League clubs here.
He is survived by his wife, Virginia, prominent in Peninsula and San Francisco society. Funeral services were pending last night.
###