Meanwhile, in Ogden, David's wife Bertha bore and reared twelve children. Eccles put all of these children to work at the earliest possible age. They carried water to railroad crews, nailed boxes, kept accounts, stacked lumber. As the children grew older, Eccles sent some of his sons on gospel preaching missions for his church, and supported some of them in university training. One graduated from University of Michigan Law School, another from Columbia University in business and finance, and others had training at Brigham Young College in Logan, at Utah State University and at the University of Utah.

During the twenty-three years between the formation of the Ogden Lumber Company in 1889 and David Eccles' death in 1912, he probably earned five or six million dollars from his Oregon enterprises. Much of this was invested in Utah. 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. One of the companies in which Eccles was a partner, the Utah Construction Company, built 700 miles of mainline track for the Western Pacific Railroad and became a leader in the heavy construction field.