Today's Looking Back can be found here.

Today, Loomis Armored is one of the world's largest armored car companies. But what you might not know is that company got its start here in the far north. The following article from the May 14, 2000 edition of the Heartland magazine explains:

Legacy of armored car began in the gold rush

Editor's note: "Things Alaskan" focuses on Alaska and polar life as shown through library and museum collections.

By RONALD K. INOUYE

Development of the West Coast armored car business is linked to Alaska's Gold Rush days and the experiences of Lee B. "Ike" Loomis in Dawson, Fairbanks, Solomon, Cleary, Takotna, McGrath, Valdez and the Copper River delta. He developed the armored car industry on the West Coast and founded the Loomis Security Co. The company's service in Alaska continues today as the Loomis, Fargo Security Service.

Born June 24, 1870, Loomis was part of a pioneering family from Elm Hall, Mich. Moving to South Dakota, Lee switched from helping in his father's general store to taking care of livestock. Married in 1890 to Jennie M. Jones, he and his wife moved to Seattle, where they operated a feed business until 1897. Seeking adventure in the Alaska Gold Rush, he came north to Dyea on the S.S. Mexico in 1897.

Loomis headed over the Chilkoot Trail to Lake Bennett. He and partner Billy Hensell earned money helping others pack over the Chilkoot. He and brother-in-law Charley Jones took horses to Skagway where they freighted. The next spring, after the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad was completed, he, Jones and another brother-in-law drove 20 calves and 22 pigs and carried groceries and supplies to Dawson to open a business.

Later, Lee started other businesses in the gold strike towns of Nome and Fairbanks. In 1905 with Jones, he started the successful Cleary Creek Commercial Co. known as the "4-Cs." For several years they packed supplies in and out of the Cleary Creek mines.

It was during those early years while other delivery businesses charged 1 to 1.5 cents per pound for delivery that the "4-Cs" offered the first free delivery service to the mines. While returning from the mines with gold, Loomis is said to have conceived the idea of a more secure vehicle to transport valuables as a business.

In 1942, Oregonian reporter Bonnie Wiley recounted, "It was in Alaska, blustery, frozen land of quick fortunes, that the idea occurred to Lee Loomis, a sourdough who carried thousands of dollars in gold dust and bullion from station to station by dog sled, pursued over the crusted snows by the constant threat of robbery, which luckily never ever took him."

In 1938, Oregon Journal columnist John J. Reddin placed the year of Loomis' idea at 1904, "... while hauling gold and supplies by dog team in the Kuskokwim area during the early-day Alaska Gold Rush."

Loomis took charge of the Julia B, a Yukon River boat, in 1908, and his wife and family joined him in Fairbanks. For the next 12 years he continued working at various ventures, some successful and others not. During this time his wife died. In 1922 he took charge of the Northern Commerical Co. trading posts in Takotna and McGrath. Serving as the Kuskokwim region postmaster, he hired a clerk, Grace A. Anderson, who became his second wife. These were his concluding Alaska ventures as three years later he returned permanently to the Pacific Northwest.

On April 13, 1925, Loomis founded the Loomis Armored Car Service in Portland, Ore. Although armored cars were developed on the East coast in 1917, they were not widely used in the Northwest. With $8,000 of his Alaska money, Loomis bought a wide chassis and commissioned a Portland carriage company to build an armored body on it; this was the first commercial armored car built west of Chicago.

As automobiles became more common during the "Roaring '20s," they served as getaway vehicles for robbers, making obsolete the traditional method of unprotected foot messengers delivering commercial deposits to the banks. Loomis' first customer was the Federal Reserve Bank in Portland followed by other banks. Business was slow for several years until 1927 when an epidemic of violent crime struck Portland, and businesses recognized the value of an armored car service.

Loomis expanded to Vancouver, British Columbia, then moved the corporate headquarters to Seattle in 1932. Incorporated in 1936, the Loomis Armored Car Service expanded to California.

Loomis remained connected to Alaska and the Yukon as did many of his era through the "Alaska-Yukon Society" composed of Outside former residents who met regularly. A four-day, 1939 Oakland, Calif., reunion attracted close to 3,000 sourdoughs who elected Loomis as president.

Returning from a national armored car convention in Florida, Loomis died April 1, 1949, in Charleston, N.C.

The Loomis legacy was appropriately honored when the first pick-up of gold from the Fort Knox Gold Mine along Cleary Creek was made in 1996 by Loomis, Fargo, & Co., a testimony to Loomis' early years. And the continuing Loomis legacy in Fairbanks is represented by the two-story L.B. Loomis cabin in Gold Rush Town at Alaskaland.