Buckey O'Neill

William Owen O'Neill

• American

Buckey O'Neill was born in Missouri, received a legal education in Washington DC, came to Arizona in 1879, and in a brief and brilliant career - became an author, reporter, editor, judge, and superintendent of schools, and was involved in several business ventures in the vast territory between Tombstone and the Grand Canyon. As Sheriff, he was famed for the capture of the men who robbed the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad at Canyon Diablo in 1889, after chasing them all the way to Wahweap Canyon, Utah. Later he was the candidate of the People's Party for territorial delegate, and twice defeated. O'Neill had prospected a bit and located what he thought was a rich copper mine near Anita, 14 miles south of the Grand Canyon. Like all other miners in the area he was faced with the prohibitive cost of shipping out the ore. What was needed was a railroad. He succeeded in interesting the Chicago firm of Lombard, Goode and Company in the mines, the railroad and the Canyon, and sold out to them in 1898 shortly after his election as mayor of Prescott and just before he went to Cuba with Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders, where he lost his life in the charge up San Juan Hill. He is memorialized in a statue which stands in front of the Yavapai County Courthouse in Prescott, and in a much larger monument, O'Neill Butte, which towers above the Kaibab Trail below Yaki Point in the Grand Canyon. - NRHP, 21 October 1975