After graduating from medical school, he joined the United States Army, and was posted to Fort Bidwell, California.

In 1887, Daly was mustered out of the army, and he moved fifty miles north to Lakeview, Oregon where he began a private medical practice.

[1][2][3] During a Christmas Eve party in 1894, an oil lamp started a fire in a crowded community hall in the small town of Silver Lake, Oregon.

Daly drove his buggy from Lakeview to Silver Lake, a distance of ninety-five miles, over bad, snow-covered roads to help victims of the tragedy.

The fire was widely reported, and Daly's efforts to reach and treat the victims earned statewide recognition and many admirers.

[3][4][7][8] Daly died on 4 January 1920 in Livermore, California while en route to a San Francisco hospital for treatment of a heart condition.

In 1897, he was the Democratic Party's nominee for an open United States Senate seat, but the Republican-controlled legislature selected Republican Joseph Simon.

[1][3] When the Oregon state legislature was considering creating a new circuit court district to serve Lake County, it seemed that everyone assumed Daly would be appointed to the new position.

However, circuit court judges were required to be members of the Oregon State Bar and Daly had no formal legal training.

To remedy this problem, the Oregon Supreme Court directed Henry L. Benson, a circuit judge from Klamath Falls and friend of Daly's, to oversee a one-man bar examination.

Daly wrote in his will: It is my earnest desire to help, aid and assist worthy and ambitious young men and women of my beloved county of Lake, to acquire a good education, so that they may be better fitted and qualified to appreciate and help to preserve the laws and constitution of this free country, defend its flag, and by their conduct as good citizens reflect honor on Lake county and the state of Oregon.

Today, the education fund Daly established is the oldest continuously operating place-based college scholarship in the United States.

To date, well over two thousand students from Lakeview and other Lake County communities have used Bernard Daly's generous scholarships to attend college.