His childhood was developed among the green landscapes of El Mameyal, just outside the city of Cali, that inspired his posthumous novel "Tierra Nativa" written in Santiago.

He became ill and decided to go back home to see his mother one last time and boarded a ship in Valparaiso but due to his deteriorating health he was disembarked in El Callao the port of the city of Lima, Peru where he died in the Hospital de Guadalupe on July 23, 1904.

The city of Cali decided ten years after his death to bring his remains and commissioned a delegation that brought his coffin home and was buried in the Capilla de San Antonio.

A Public Library was dedicated in his name [1] and a anthology of his poems was published in Santiago, selected and edited with critical notes by Julio Molina Nunez [2] and in Cali in 2001.

At the centenary of his birth, in July 2004, the "Festival de Poesía Isaís Gamboa" was held in Cali in memory of the poet and the book "Los Gamboa: Una Dinastia de Poetas" was published by the poet Hugo Cuevas-Mohr and the historian Vicente Perez Silva.