Marcus Daly, a poor Irish immigrant, came to America and built an enormously successful empire in Butte, Montana known as Anaconda Copper Company.​

He began his mining career in California, Nevada and Utah. But in 1876 he headed for Butte where his fortune would be found. He believed that Butte Hill was an entire mountain of copper ore, perhaps even the “richest hill on earth!” In this way, he was the first to recognize the true value of Butte’s ore.​

In cooperation with George Hearst and others, Daly developed the Butte mines. He built the huge Anaconda smelter, power plants, and founded a newspaper, the Anaconda Standard. He built the town of Anaconda for his smelter and constructed a railroad to transport the ore.​

He was one of the three “Copper Kings” of Butte, the others being William Clark and Augustus Heinze. Clark and Daly were forever feuding and their infamous war became known as the “Battle of the Copper Kings.”​

In 1895, Daly consolidated his vast mining enterprise into the Anaconda Copper Company and served as its first President. Anaconda continued to dominate Montana mining history long after its founder’s demise and became one of the world’s greatest mining companies. Daly’s “copper vision” was completely vindicated. The metal became to Butte as precious as the purest gold or silver. For a man who never attended school a day in his life, he had great practical knowledge in mining and founded an empire that changed the history of Montana and the nation.​

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