Eccles, David, 1849-1912

Pioneer western industrialist. David Eccles founded the Oregon Lumber Company, and owned several other companies. He bought into banks, insurance companies, railroads, beet sugar factories, flour mills, construction companies, condensed milk plants, and canneries, coal mining ventures, electric light plants, a hotel in London, and the Grand Ogden House in Ogden, Utah. Eccles was elected to the Ogden City Council and served as mayor from 1888 to 1890. At the time of his death, he was president of sixteen industrial corporations and seven banks. He was Utah's first multimillionaire. David Eccles died of a heart attack in 1912 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Ogden Lumber Company began harvesting timber in 1883 around Scofield, Utah. David Eccles gradually relocated his lumbering operations to Oregon, and in 1889 he incorporated his lumbering businesses under the name of The Oregon Lumber Company.