He homesteaded the Vaughn ranch in the Sun River valley in Montana, building a sandstone mansion as his home there.

[1] Vaughan left home at the age of 19 to take a position as a gardener for the wealthy banker Benjamin Heywood Jones in Liverpool (where his sister Jane lived).

[3] There he learned English,[2] and in the fall of 1858 he traveled to Rome, New York, in the United States, to visit his brother Hugh, who had emigrated to the U.S. a year earlier.

Vaughan traveled to America without telling his parents (doing so only after he arrived), and fully intended to return to Wales.

The official who filled out the paperwork misspelled his name as "Vaughn", an error noticed only after his citizenship had been approved.

They traveled by horse-drawn wagon to Council Bluffs, Iowa (which took 25 days), crossed the Mississippi River by ferryboat, and arrived in Omaha, Nebraska.

[7] The wagon train arrived in Alder Gulch (near Virginia City, Madison County, Montana) on July 13, 1864.

He spent July and August working for the company of Boon & Vivian mining gold as a day laborer.

[9] In September 1864, he and four other men headed east (encountering petrified wood in the Tom Miner Basin in what is now Park County), but found no gold deposits.

[12] He moved to nearby Nelson Gulch, and was present when a gigantic gold nugget worth $2,000 was discovered on the Maxwell & Rollins Co. claim on July 3, 1865.

[15] While living in Nelson Gulch, Vaughn became convinced that Montana was excellent ranching and farming country.

[19] With investments from railroad owner James J. Hill and Helena businessman Charles Arthur Broadwater, houses, a store, and a flour mill were established in 1884.

[22] When she grew up, Arvonia Vaughn married civil engineer Hugh Max Sprague, a native of Fullerville, New York, on October 4, 1911.

The first was the Arvon Block (named for his daughter), a 40-room hotel with a modern and sophisticated horse stable, located at 114-116 First Avenue South.

The other was the Vaughn Block, the city's first apartment building, located at the corner of Central Avenue and Third Street South.

[25] Vaughn sold his ranch in 1890 to "Captain" Thomas Couch, a Cornish immigrant and expert miner who managed the Boston and Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver Mining Company.

He speculated in real estate, built warehouses and other commercial buildings, and financed mining operations throughout the state.

Widely known in the city as a kind and generous man, Vaughn became known as "Uncle Bob" to the people of Great Falls.

[30] Vaughn's good friend, the nationally famous "cowboy artist" Charles Marion Russell, illustrated the book.