Lummis Left His Imprint on the City

Health nut Charles Fletcher Lummis traveled to Los Angeles the old-fashioned way: He walked. All the way from Cincinnati, covering 3,507 miles in 143 days, to take a job as city editor of the Los Angeles Times. The author and historian left his imprint on L.A. when he built El Alisal (“place of the sycamores”), a fanciful stone-studded house along the Arroyo Seco. There he entertained prominent people of the day, including John Muir, Frederic Remington and Theodore Roosevelt. An arts advocate, Lummis also founded L.A.’s Southwest Museum.