Llewellyn Lemont Loud, known professionally as L. L. Loud, was born in Maine in 1879. After graduating from high school in 1901, Loud traveled around Alaska and Washington before settling in San Francisco in 1905. He spent the next five years as a non-degree student at the University of California. He worked for the university full time as a guard, janitor, field archaeologist and, finally, senior preparator, from 1911 to 1926, and from 1931 until his death in 1946.