Loomis Mansion aka Loomis Station

My memory of the Lewis Alfred Loomis mansion is not really of a mansion at all – more of a derelict old house that would have made a perfect setting for a Halloween party or, in these times, perhaps, a vampire movie.  It was torn down by Loomis’s son in 1953.

Judging from photographs and drawings of the house, it doesn’t quite qualify as a “mansion” in my mind, even at its prime.  I guess my imagination runs more to the DuPont’s Winterthur in Delaware or and the Rockefeller’s Kykuit in New York.  Still, here at the beach the Loomis place was considered the grandest home of its day and L.A. Loomis more than fulfilled his role as its somewhat quirky millionaire owner.

L.A. Loomis

Loomis hadn’t been born with that proverbial silver spoon in his mouth.  He came west in the 1870s to raise sheep on the prairies south of Ocean Park with his brother, Edwin.  It was an unfortunate accident in transferring wool from the shore at Ilwaco to the waiting boat – a “wool-wetting experience” it was called – that prompted him to build the first dock at Ilwaco.

Next he bought stagecoaches to carry mail and passengers the length of the weather beach, bough boats to take mail across the Columbia River and Shoalwater Bay and, finally in 1889, built a narrow-gauge railroad from Ilwaco to Nahcotta.  By then he was well-known, and deservedly so, as a transportation mogul and millionaire.

He played the part as though he were “to the manner born.”  He wore a wide-brimmed hat, a well,-tailored frock coat, and carried a gold-headed walking stick.  He was known as a “hands-on manager” of his railroad and often inspected the line himself.  He acted as his own section boss and it was said that he wouldn’t allow replacement of any tie unless it was so rotten that the tip of his walking stick went completely through upon striking it.  And, he sold wood from his own property cut, split and stacked along the line, to supply the wood-burning engines.

“Loomis House” by Charles Fitzpatrick

While he was building his railroad, Loomis was also building a grand Victorian mansion just south of Klipsan Beach.  Four tall bay windows faced the ocean, heavy cornices adorned the roof, and a quartette of ornate fireplaces heated two stately parlors and two masters’ bedrooms.  With twelve-foot ceilings, polychrome scrolls around the main light fixtures, paneled walls topped with decorative moldings, a conservatory and eight bedrooms, it was said to be the most magnificent structure in the county.

In the fenced enclosure surrounding the house were barns, blacksmith shop, and lodgings for helpers. The mansion became a stop for the train, but according to Loomis’s granddaughter, Ellen Loomis McMurry, it was mostly for the family’s convenience.  She also told me that after her grandfather died in 1913, there was no one in the family in a position to live in the house permanently, and it gradually fell into disrepair.

Had I known all of this history of the building back in the 1940s and ‘50s, perhaps I’d have paid better attention to that scary old dilapidated building along the highway.  But… perhaps not.  It seems that no one else did, either.