Wagon Days to celebrate the Lewis family’s rich contribution to Ketchum
By Jean Jacques Bohl
On Saturday, Sept. 3, thousands of locals and tourists will marvel at the sight of the Big Hitch ore wagons as they roll along as the centerpiece of the annual Wagon Days Parade. The famed wagons are an intricate part of Ketchum’s colorful history. They originally belonged to Horace C. Lewis, who ran a freight line during the area’s pioneer days in the late 1800s.
The patriarch of the Lewis family, Isaac, then a banker in Butte, Mont., arrived on the morning of May 3, 1880, with Montana mining engineer Albert Griffith, into what was unofficially known as Leadville.
“At about 11 o’clock, we pitched our tent, the first tent on the present site of the town of Ketchum,” Lewis wrote in his unpublished 1891 autobiography. He and his wife had five children, George, Horace, Gertrude, Mary and Clancey, who followed their father to the area.
After the town was renamed Ketchum, for a trapper, David Ketchum, who had come through with Griffith in the winter of 1880, Lewis and his contemporaries laid out the town. Parcels were available for $2 each, of which Lewis bought four. He built a ranch for his family on property to the east of Ketchum, on what is now the site of the Sun Valley Lodge.
“I made the town,” Isaac said once. And he had a point.
In 1883, he purchased the weekly newspaper, The Ketchum Keystone, for his son George. George would eventually become a state representative, running on a Democrat populist platform. He served as Idaho’s Secretary of State from 1897 to 1899.
In 1884, Isaac opened the Isaac Lewis First National Bank. The historic brick building is on Main Street in Ketchum, and is now occupied by Rocky Mountain Hardware. He also partnered with his daughter Mary’s husband, William Lemon, and opened the Lewis and Lemon General Store, across from his bank. The original building now houses The Cornerstone Bar & Grill.
Clancey attended a military school and led an adventurous life of his own as he taught math in Canton, China. Gertrude became an activist for Native Americans, volunteering her time to education on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.
Meanwhile, Isaac’s son, Horace, born on Sept. 14, 1858, moved to Ketchum after working at the First National Bank in Helena. After a short employment as a credit analyst for a supply company, he founded Ketchum’s Fast Freight Line to serve the needs of the miners in the Wood River Valley. He carved out the original Trail Creek Pass for his wagons, which ran wagons and stagecoaches to such places as Helena and Bozeman.
To haul freight of ore and supplies, he built narrow wagons to maneuver on the precarious mountainous passes. A round trip to Challis on one of these wagons would take as long as two weeks. The last of these wagons in existence is the iconic Big Hitch.
On Feb. 7, 1889, Horace married Katherine Barry of San Francisco. They never had children. They lived in a home on what is now Sun Valley Road that houses The Elephant’s Perch. Horace ran the freight line until 1905 when he decided to go into mining. He operated the Croesus gold and copper mine near Hailey. After Isaac’s death, Horace took over the family ranch. He died Jan. 19, 1911, and the Brass family bought the ranch from Katherine.
Katherine was considered the Grand Dame of Ketchum in her day who, by 1936, when Averell Harriman bought the Brass Ranch and opened the Sun Valley Lodge, was living in Seattle. Harriman invited her to ride on the first Union Pacific train from Los Angeles to Sun Valley in 1936.
The lasting legacy of the Lewis family includes architectural, cultural and business influences still felt today. The Lewis Fast Freight ore wagons were so unique that they drew the attention of the Disney Corporation, which made a generous offer to purchase them. The Lewis family declined. Instead, in 1958, the family gifted the Big Hitch to the City of Ketchum on the condition that it be displayed to the public. Thus, the concept of the Wagon Days Parade was born. The first Wagon Days Parade, held in 1958, marked Katherine’s 85th birthday.