Sketches & Portraits ~ James David Wood
Wood, James David
The late James David Wood was a
typical representative of the self-made man, and his successful
career from a poor boy to the head of the largest cattle raising
concern in the United States is interesting and worthy of a
prominent place in the history of the inter-mountain States,
where Mr. Wood spent the greater part of his long and useful
career.
James D. Wood was a representative of one of the first families
of Virginia and Tennessee, and the name was very prominent
socially and otherwise during Colonial times and immediately
succeeding the period of the Revolution. His mother, Marcia
Cassandra Fowler, derived her ancestry from the distinguished
physician and mathematician of that name. His father, Jeptha
Wood, was an early pioneer in Sullivan County, Missouri, where
he was a civil engineer, and later a farmer and stock-raiser of
importance; and it was there that young Wood received his first
knowledge of the business that was destined to bring him fame
and fortune.
James David Wood was born August 27, 1841, and his education was
obtained in a log cabin wherein was located a district school,
and he was reared on a farm. At an early age he started out in
life in the face of hard-ships and many obstacles that would
discourage a less determined and courageous boy, but he plodded
on and eventually embarked, in a small way, in a mercantile
business, opening a village store in his native place.
In 1861, at the breaking out of the
Civil War, he lost all his business and had to seek new fields
for his business talents; therefore, obtaining a loan, he began
the business of shipping cattle to Chicago, and it is a fact
that in the early days he grazed his cattle on the very area
where now stand the great skyscrapers and beautiful residences
of that city, which is a striking example of the wonderful
growth of Chicago during one man's lifetime. In 1863 the placer
gold mining excitement in Montana attracted Mr. Wood and a year
later he started in that direction, locating first at Atchison,
Kansas. Then he contracted to drive a freight train across the
plains to Montana, for which he obtained his board. This outfit
consisted of twenty-six wagons, with six mules to draw each one.
His first salary was $20 per month, and he was glad to get it,
though the work was a hazardous one, and it took him
seventy-three days and nights to make the journey, being
frequently stampeded by Sioux Indians, then very troublesome to
voyagers over the plains. Upon reaching Montana, he had sixty
dollars in greenbacks, then worth fifty cents on the dollar. He
turned his attention to placer mining, with varying success,
until in 1868 he went to Salmon City and Leesburg, Idaho, where
for a time he conducted a general retail store.
In 1879 he began in the upper Salmon
River country both mining and smelting. He was one of the
organizers of the Salmon River Mining and Smelting Company, with
works at Clayton, Idaho; among his partners being the Omaha and
Grant Smelting Company, operators. Since that time up to his
demise, he was very prominently identified with the mining and
stock-raising business of Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Mexico, and
his reputation for honesty and integrity of purpose was second
to none in the inter-mountain region.
He was a successful operator in the
livestock business, having built up the largest sheep-ranching
business in the United States, operating in the States of Idaho
and Montana, as well as being the principal owner in one of the
largest cattle ranches in the world, the latter located in the
State of Chihuahua, Mexico. He was also instrumental in the
development of the great oil fields in southern California. Mr.
Wood also operated a canning factory in Utah, and was
prominently and actively connected with many of the best Utah
and Nevada mines, and was a factor in the up-building of the
great inter-mountain region, of which he can truly be called one
of the history-makers and a real pioneer.
Mr. Wood was married in 1872, and had a family of two sons and
one daughter. His widow, Catharine Wood, is a lady of charming
manner and unostentatious. She has seen all the rigors and
hardships which only early pioneering in the West could afford.
She is widely and favorably known and esteemed all through the
inter-mountain region, where she has a host of friends.
Index
Source: Sketches of the Inter-Mountain
States, Utah, Idaho and Nevada, Published by The Salt Lake
Tribune, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1909
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