Pioneers of Alaska

1933 - Alfred J. Lomen

Alfred was born in the 1890s, and married Mildred G. Lomen. In 1914, brothers Carl and Alfred Lomen, both attorneys, moved from Minnesota to Alaska.

They bought a herd of reindeer and planned to promote the sale of reindeer meat and fur in the United States.

In 1926, the Lomen brothers collaborated with Macy’s department stores to stage annual Christmas parades featuring Santa Claus in a sleigh being pulled by reindeer. Participating United States cities included Portland, St. Paul, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, and Brooklyn.

The Lomen brothers also wrote “pretend” children’s letters asking about Santa Claus and his reindeer which were published nationwide.

Because of all the letters and parades, Santa Claus and his reindeer became an integral part of the North American Christmas tradition.

The Lomen brothers begin the successful breeding of caribou with reindeer, and were able to buy up smaller Inuit operations that could no longer compete with them.

It was said that the Lomen Company owned the largest herds in Alaska. They built massive meat processing plants and huge freezer warehouses giving employment to many people.

But problems begin for the Lomen Company when the cattle industry lobbied congress to discourage the promotion and sale of imported reindeer meat.

In 1929, the stock market crashes and the Depression began. No new markets were found or developed. Reindeer meat and fur sales declined.

In 1939, the “Reindeer Act” placed the management of all the herds in Alaska under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

This legally transferred ownership of all reindeer to Native Alaskans. The Alaskan Samis and many others were forced to sell their reindeer for three or four dollars a head. They felt the United States government had betrayed them.

All the reindeer owned by the Lomen brothers were bought by the U. S. government for a lump sum of $720,000.00.

Alfred Lomen was a member of the Alaska Territorial Senate from 1931-34.

Starting in 1897, the brothers also opened The Lomen Brothers photo studios in Nome and Juneau, which contained an important collection of glass negatives from other Alaskan photographers.

Alfred was the main photographer in the Nome store, capturing most of the gold rush.

The Nome store was destroyed by fire in 1934, but the best negatives had been in secure storage at the site and were removed from the fire and shipped to Seattle. They were eventually bought by a dealer, Shorey’s Book Store.

An arctic rescue expert, Alfred Lomen was the first white man to reach the scene of the 1935 Will Rogers-Wiley Post plane crash.

When Alfred Lomen died in 1950 at age 61, in Seattle after a long illness, Time Magazine ran his death notice.