Isaac Hayes Loomis

1860s–1870s

Born in July 1866 (in Ohio or Des Moines, Iowa; the records differ) to Byron Taylor Loomis and Juliette Cordelia Hayes. Grew up in Linn County, Iowa, and from the mid-1870s in Ellsworth County, Kansas.

1880s

Took part in local literary societies and the Farmers' Alliance, and clerked in his father's hardware store in Geneseo, Kansas. In September 1887 he left to prospect for gold in Arizona Territory and New Mexico.

1890s

Ran cattle on the Queets River and built streets in Olympia, Washington. Married Augusta Swanson at Shelton on 17 December 1896. Ran pack trains on the White Pass trail during the Klondike rush and carried mail between Log Cabin and Atlin, B.C. Son Edward was born in Skagway in 1899.

1900s

Ran the Loomis Roadhouse at Tonsina, Alaska, and the Loomis Transportation Company, freighting and carrying mail between Valdez and Fairbanks. Augusta divorced him in 1904.

1910s–1920s

Freighted and mined around Fairbanks and Iditarod, then ranched at Clearwater, Washington, and married Alice M. Lyons in 1914. Farmed in Saskatchewan and from 1922 at Millican, Oregon. Died in Vancouver, Washington, on 11 May 1926.

A Restless Frontier Youth

Isaac Hayes "Ike" Loomis was born in July 1866, in Ohio or in Des Moines, Iowa, depending on the record, the son of Byron Taylor Loomis and Juliette Cordelia Hayes. He grew up on the family's farms in Fairfax Township, Linn County, Iowa, and from about 1875 in Ellsworth County, Kansas, with older sisters Sarah and Clara and brothers Nelson ("Bud") and W. A. As a young man he gave readings, songs, and declamations at the local Farmers' Alliance and literary society meetings, and in 1887 he was clerking at his father's hardware store on Main Street in Geneseo, Kansas.

That September Ike left the store to look for gold in Arizona Territory. By the next spring he was in Albuquerque, came home briefly, and went back to New Mexico with a friend. In 1890 he bought a large tract of Kansas land from his sister Clara's family for $10,000. He then went west to Washington, where he kept free-range cattle on the Queets River, as his brother Bud did, and worked as a contractor building streets in Olympia.

The Klondike and the Alaska Trails

On December 17, 1896, Ike married Augusta Swanson, a young Swedish immigrant, at the home of Arthur Needham in Shelton, Washington. The following September he had a pack train on the Skagway–White Pass trail, and he made his living packing and cooking and ran supplies to the survey parties laying out the railway to Whitehorse. In February 1898 he came back to Shelton for six more horses and to take Augusta's brother Charlie and sister Jennie north with him. Their son, Edward, was born at home in Skagway on May 5, 1899. That winter Ike and a partner carried the mail, passengers, and freight twice a week between Log Cabin and Atlin, British Columbia.

In 1901 Sol C. Simpson and associates sent him by way of Valdez to the new diggings at Chistochina, and that September he opened the Loomis Roadhouse by the Tonsina River bridge, eighty miles inland, with beds, meals, and supplies for prospectors and stabling for horses and sled dogs. Augusta and her sister ran it, and travelers wrote that "the cooking and accommodations puts mothers in the shade – the best along the line," with peas, lettuce, cabbage, onions, and radishes already up in the garden. In March 1902 Ike carried the mail the eighty miles from Tonsina to Valdez in a record sixteen hours.

In December 1902 he founded the Loomis Transportation Company, with fifty pack animals and trading posts at Tonsina and Nizina, hauling mining supplies and machinery, including a sawmill, by sled in winter and pack train in summer. Life on the trails was rough. That December he rounded up twenty-five men to run off claim jumpers from two lots he had fenced, and the next June he was himself arrested for jumping Nell Doty's claim. In January 1904 he led a party of ten hauling ten tons of bacon, sugar, and milk 395 miles from Valdez to the new camp at Fairbanks, and that winter he was so badly frostbitten in the face, hands, and feet that it was feared he would be crippled for life.

Divorce and Wandering Years

That same January, Augusta filed for divorce. She testified that Ike had never supported her and their son, so that she had had to work to support herself, and that he had been "drunk and dissolute" for most of their marriage, gambled their money away, and used cruel and threatening language when drunk. The divorce was granted on April 29, 1904, and Augusta was given full custody of Ed.

Ike stayed in the north for years. He bought a share of the Fairbanks mail route in 1905 and spent his own money that winter clearing a ten-foot trail toward the Tanana, freighted eggs and wood between Fairbanks and Valdez with his partner William Ahlmark in 1908–09, and in 1910 agreed to pay $50,000 for options on a group of mining claims and ran freight out of Flat Creek near Iditarod. In January 1911 he won about $1,000 betting on the Iditarod dog races. By April 1914 he was back in Washington, ranching at Clearwater, and on April 23 of that year he married Alice M. Lyons, a Seattle businesswoman, in Seattle.

The High Desert

Around 1918 Ike and two partners bought a 1,500-acre farm in southeastern Saskatchewan, and after a stint on land in Kitsap County, Washington, he moved in 1922 to Millican, in Oregon's high desert east of Bend. He rented neighbors' homesteads, cleared land, and in 1923 harvested 200 tons of rye hay and 50 tons of wheat hay from 175 acres. His neighbors told him wheat would not grow there, so he planted seven acres of ninety-day wheat as an experiment and got thirty bushels to the acre. He ran cattle, went to dances and school programs, stayed at the Downing Hotel on trips to Bend, and in December 1925 threw a housewarming dance for about thirty guests to celebrate an addition to his house.

But his finances were failing. By the spring of 1926 he was living on a ranch at Fern Prairie, in Clark County, Washington, with his stepson-in-law, Orville Knight, and trying to sell it. On the morning of May 11, 1926, he went to a real-estate office in Vancouver, Washington, asked to borrow a room to write letters, and wrote to his brother Bud that he was despondent: he had failed in his deals, lost his ambition, brought disappointment to those dear to him, and could not repay what he owed. He took his own life there that morning. He was fifty-nine, and he was buried at Hoquiam, Washington. That June the news from Millican was that his wheat was looking splendid.