In 1894 he accompanied his family to Salt Lake City, joining the Mercur Gold Mining and Milling Company, which his father served as president.

Dern was co-inventor of the Holt-Dern roaster, a furnace for carrying out the Holt-Christenson roasting process, a technique for recovering silver from low-grade ores.

(1902), John H., William B., Margaret, Elizabeth, and James G. Lottie died on September 5, 1952, in Chicago, and is buried next to her husband at Mount Olivet Cemetery, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[2] Dern entered politics in 1914, running on a Democratic and Progressive fusion ticket in a Utah state senate district encompassing Salt Lake County.

As governor, Dern focused on using Utah's rich natural resources to develop the state economy and devoted himself to education, social welfare, and tax reform, thus further embroidering his reputation as a progressive.

This controversy brought him into direct conflict with U.S. secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover, who was attempting to mediate the dispute for the Calvin Coolidge administration.

Dern's department provided the CCC with food, clothing, transportation, and medical care for 300,000 unemployed who joined its ranks for work in the preservation and conservation of America's public lands.

The army's Corps of Engineers began several important public works projects during Dern's tenure, including the dredging of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the construction of the Florida ship canal.

He was greatly interested in the stratosphere expeditions Explorer II and fully aware of their importance and placed the needed facilities of the Army organization behind the project.

Dern was fond of outdoor sports such as fishing and hiking and is remembered as a hard-working member of the Roosevelt cabinet, one who could also be an entertaining public speaker.

After years of tight military budgets and an isolationist foreign policy, the War Department was a relatively inconsequential post during Dern's tenure.