Reminiscences of Frontier Life

"Calhoun, half conscious, bleeding and stunned, crawled from the ruin, only to be pounced upon, scalped and left for dead...He crawled painfully ...carrying his scalp in his hand." -Isaac B. Hammond
"Isaac Hammond was an experienced builder of mining machinery...had been trying to put together an Alaska 'dredge scheme.'" -The Northern Gold Fleet: Twentieth-century Gold Dredging in Alaska (1996)
"Hammond produced not only bucket-line dredges for use on the Snake but others for the Alaska goldfields." - A History of Gold Dredging in Idaho (2016)
"Hammond, the veteran mine equipment man and president of the Hammond Manufacturing Company...has had over 20 years' experience in mine equipment, during which time he has seen thousands of the best properties on the continent." -Mining Journal (1901)

Heading to the Rocky Mountains at the age of 23 after being rejected for Civil War duty in the mid-1860s, successful gold miner Isaac B. Hammond's relates his 33 years of frontier life in Kansas, Nebraska, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, Dakota Territory, Alaska, Washington, and British Columbia. His well-written 1904 book is aptly titled "Reminiscences of Frontier Life."

Hammond's always-interesting narrative of the Old West includes harrowing personal accounts of hostile tribes, buffalo stampedes, bears and panthers, prairie fire, blizzards, homesteading, extreme thirst, sourdough bread, mule whacking, desperadoes, vigilance committees, prospecting, saloon fights, lynchings, railroad construction, Sioux railroad attacks, scalpings, train wrecks, mine salting, miner's camps, gold stampeeds, swindles, tidal waves, saw mills, and steamers.

In describing a narrow escape from a prairie fire, Hammond writes:

"By this time the main body of the fire, together with the fires I had lit, came rushing down upon us with such fierce heat that it seemed as if we must perish in the flames or be suffocated with the smoke. By breathing through a handful of earth, I could get some little relief. My poor horse reeled from side to side, like a drunken man, and finally dropped..."

Hammond's camp life provides some comic relief at times, such as troubles his with a pack mule who ruined their flour supply in a creek:

"The mule was looked upon as a bad animal, and he had not a friend in the crowd...Each man felt as if he owed him a whipping....Not satisfied with the earth to graze upon, he must needs make an attack on our short supply of bacon to appease his enormous appetite. But this mule was no fool, and seemed to know there was danger in the air...kept at a respectful distance, evidently waiting until we would calm down...."

Ultimately becoming a highly successful manufacturer of mining dredges that now litter the landscape of former gold boom districts, Hammond never forgot his early adventures or the hardships he faced down in helping to tame the Old West.

More about the author:

Isaac B. Hammond was born in New York in 1844. During his childhood, the family removed to Kankakee, Ill., and at the age of 23 Hammond pushed still farther west, and entered the service of the Union Pacific R.R., in the construction department of which he served until the transcontinental line was completed.

He then went to Deadwood, and was engaged for many years in the manufacture of stamping and other machinery used in the production of gold.

In 1888 he went to Alaska, whence he was sent to London to purchase a 120-stamp mill for use in the notorious Bear's Nest mine, near Douglas. After the collapse of that enterprise, Hammond bought the machinery and brought it to Portland, Ore., where he organized the Union Electric Power Co.

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