Walter E. Ware, Daniel Jackling and the Jackling Mansion

W. A. Sherman had this stately mansion constructed about 1898. Walter E. Ware, who shares the title “Dean of Utah Architecture” with Richard Kletting, designed the building. Ware opened an office in Salt Lake City in 1891 and practiced architecture for nearly sixty years, until 1949. In addition to building several large mansions, Ware also designed the Presbyterian Church on South Temple, a tree-lined boulevard that originally was known as Brigham Street.

Daniel Cowan Jackling, a prominent mining engineer, purchased the Sherman home in 1904. Jackling was known in Utah as the “Copper Prince.” Among his many successful ventures were the development of the Masabi iron range in Minnesota, gold mines in Mercur, Utah, and developing copper lands that became the Kennecott Copper Company.

In 1898, Danial Jackling produced a report co-authored by Robert Gemmell that proposed mining in the Bingham Canyon area. They concluded that mining the low-grade ore (less than two percent copper) could be profitable if done in huge quantities.

Jackling organized the Utah Copper Company in 1902. One of his first responsibilities was to oversee the construction of a mill at Copperton, which was used to demonstrate the validity of his copper-mining theories. He later directed the building of the Magna concentrator in early 1906. He also was successful in obtaining additional financial support for the Utah Copper Company from the Guggenheim family who purchased $500,000 in Utah Copper stock and underwrote a $3,000,000 bond.

By midway through the twentieth century, Jackling had his hand in most copper companies in the American West and more than 60 percent of the world’s copper production was being mined using Jackling’s development of low-grade ore processing.

During World War I, Jackling served as director of government explosives plants, and for his outstanding wartime efforts he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by President Woodrow Wilson.

In 1926 Jackling received a Gold Medal Award from the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America. In 1940 he was given the Washington Award of the Western Society of Engineers for “pioneering in large-scale mining and treatment of low-grade copper ores, releasing vast resources from formerly worthless deposits.”

Daniel C. Jackling enjoys a worldwide reputation and a full size bronze statue of him sculpted by Avard Fairbanks stands in the rotunda of the Utah State Capitol building.