He spent the early years of his childhood traveling with his family around the harness racing circuit, and at age 11 he left home to join his two brothers at a ranch near Wells, Nevada.

Scott's involvement with the show ended in 1900, when he married Ella Josephine Milius (whom he called "Jack") in New York City.

After he was not allowed to rejoin the Wild West Show, he conned a wealthy New York City businessman into backing a fictitious gold mining operation.

After he claimed that the bag had been stolen before he reached his destination, the newspapers eagerly picked up the story, starting Scott on a spree of self-promotion ventures.

The only passengers were Scott and his wife Jack, F. N. Holman, and Charles E. Van Loan, a writer for the Los Angeles Examiner.

Johnson also used the land at Lower Vine for a short while to farm alfalfa so he could legally claim the property for himself under the Homesteading Act.

The problem was rectified in 1935, but construction could not be completed as Johnson's National Life Insurance Company had gone into bankruptcy two years earlier.

Johnson willed Death Valley Ranch to a religious organization, with the provision that Scotty could live there as long as he wished.

When that idea did not pan out, Johnson bought Jack a house in Reno, Nevada, and began paying her a monthly sum that varied between $100 and $150 to help support her child.

Johnson continued sending money to Jack throughout her life, although the sum was necessarily reduced after the stock market crash of 1929 to only $50.

In 1937, after years of living in poverty on the meager sum provided by Johnson and any money she could acquire through menial jobs, Jack brought Scott to court demanding $1,000 per month to support herself and her son, and a share of whatever interests Scott held in Scotty's Castle and the gold mine Jack still believed he had.

The actor Jack Lomas (1911–1959) played Scotty, who in 1905 had commissioned the "Scott Special," a passenger train of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.