On his famous cross-country trek on foot in 1884-85, Charles Fletcher Lummis strode not only into history but, more to our purposes, through San Bernardino County.
Lummis journeyed through Needles (and probably brambles) and across the arid Mojave Desert, reaching Daggett on Jan. 28, 1885. From there he came south through the Cajon Pass, catching his first, wonderful glimpse of Southern California proper.
“Off early next morning, down the widening valley, at whose southern end I could see the broad plains, broken by snow-capped mountains…” Lummis later wrote. “And once out of the pass, I was in paradise.”
To be fair, Lummis was prone to overstatement. But at least he said nice things. Not all visitors do.
Who was Charles Fletcher Lummis? One of the more indelible characters of early Los Angeles history, he was a polymath driven by restlessness, curiosity and ego.
A Harvard drop-out and self-taught intellectual, Lummis came here from Ohio for a newspaper job. Fascinated by the desert landscape, he founded the Southwest Museum for his collection of artifacts, advocated for the decaying Spanish missions and stuck up for Native Americans.
For six years, he headed the Los Angeles city library. You encountered Lummis if you read Susan Orlean’s 2018 bestseller, “The Library Book.” He cut quite a figure around town.
“His favorite outfit was a three-button suit coat and trousers made of bright green wide-wale corduroy, which he wore with a black-and-red-patterned cummerbund,” Orlean wrote. “He almost always accessorized with a wide-brimmed Stetson sombrero and a pair of moccasins.”
Local librarians take note. Anyway, I bring up Lummis today because of his most famous adventure.
He was a columnist for an Ohio newspaper, the Chillicothe Leader, where he made enough of a name for himself that he was poached by the Los Angeles Times.
The Times would have sent him train fare, but Lummis wanted to see the country up close. He pitched a wild scheme, to which his boss agreed: He would walk.
In modern times, it’s been a truism that nobody walks in L.A. Here was a man who walked all the way there.
The 25-year-old Lummis set out on Sept. 12, 1884 from Cincinnati, arriving in L.A. 143 days later, Feb. 1, 1885. He traversed 3,507 miles in a somewhat roundabout route, covering 30 miles a day.
Along the way, Lummis filed separate dispatches for both the Times and the Leader — more on that in a bit — that made him a celebrity.
I had heard of this adventure for years but had never thought much about his route. But on my morning walks through Pomona College, a plaque in the Smith Campus Center made me curious. It consists of the quote up above, about “paradise,” and is titled “Charles Fletcher Lummis enters the Pomona Valley, 1885.”
I’d passed this plaque for years, intending one day to investigate further. Then, realizing that 1885 has a pleasing numerical parallel to 2025, I looked up his book “A Tramp Across the Continent.”
This 1892 account of his journey is a rewritten version of his Times columns. I found the text online a few days ago.
It turns out that Lummis came through our region Jan. 30 to Feb. 1, 1885 — precisely 140 years ago. Yet another lucky break for your anniversary-minded columnist.
However, my late discovery didn’t leave time to read the book in full. His journey through the desert was probably fascinating. I just cut to the chase.
On Jan. 30, 1885, Lummis saw the Mojave River near today’s Victorville, began his descent through the Cajon Pass, went through the toll gate and stayed overnight at a farmhouse.
The next morning, Jan. 31, Lummis reached the valley floor and “struck out along the foothills,” he wrote. “Now I was truly in ‘God’s country’ — the real Southern California, which is peerless.”
A bit hyperbolically, Lummis rhapsodized as follows:
“The ground was carpeted in myriad wild flowers, birds filled the air with song, and clouds of butterflies fluttered past me. I waded clear, icy trout brooks, startled innumerable flocks of quail, and ate fruit from the gold-laden trees of the first orange orchards I had ever seen.”
Recall that this was written in 1892, a few years after the fact, when Lummis’ imagination had had more time to work its magic.
A second book, “Letters from the Southwest,” compiled by scholars in 1989, is taken directly from his 1884-85 dispatches to the Chillicothe Leader. The Claremont Colleges Library has a copy. One night last week, I walked there from home — luckily I live a few blocks away rather than in Ohio — and paged through the relevant section.
Here he was less poetic and more direct.
“In the afternoon I was in Cucamonga, sampling the products of its winery, and walking through its orange groves, heavy with golden fruit,” Lummis wrote. “Then on past beautiful Ontario, and at last, late in the evening, into thriving Pomona, whence I telegraphed to the folks that I was gettin’ thar.”
On Feb. 1, he awakened refreshed.
“Up the next morning with the sun, and off through Arcadia, Puente and El Monte to San Gabriel, where is the famous old mission,” Lummis wrote. He stopped for supper, shaved and had a smoke.
In walked Harrison Gray Otis, the owner of the Times, who’d heard Lummis had arrived and wanted to greet him.
That night the pair of them set off on foot to travel the final 10 miles to L.A. They reached the city — at the time a frontier town of 12,000 people — at 11 p.m.
The next morning, Feb. 2, at 9 a.m., Lummis reported for his first day of work at the Times.
Whether he put his tired feet up on his desk is not recorded. But he’d earned the right.
brIEfly
Speaking of alternative forms of transportation, Tuesday (Feb. 4) is Transit Equity Day, in which public transit is free, including in the Inland Empire and L.A., in honor of Rosa Parks. If you’ve ever wanted to try taking Metrolink, Tuesday would be a good day for it. When you get off the train, you could ride a bus or the subway. Or, like Charles Fletcher Lummis, you could hoof it.
David Allen goes on a ramble Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.