Why did Lummis choose to walk across America?

Charles Lummis is an American classic: blustery, a little insecure, but ready for anything and willing to work hard to realize his dreams. His tramp across America is the perfect example. In some ways, it was less of a crazy notion in the 1880s than it is today. Trains, planes and automobiles were yet to make a trip across the continent a routine event.Transcontinental trains did not start running until the 1870s. Before that, getting across the continent involved arduous stage coach routes, or a slow, bumpy slog by wagon or horse. Some people walked, of course, but not many did it for fun!

Lummis owed some of his inspiration to the great naturalists, like Alexander von Humboldt and John Muir who logged long journeys of discovery through the Americas. Lummis was more interested in people. What he discovered on his tramp across America was eye-opening for him. It was an America he had never experienced back in New England. It changed his life. Our new tramp promises to open a few eyes as well. Who knows what we will find.

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Jonathan Spaulding

A feature-length documentary now in Pre-Production in Los Angeles

Charles Fletcher Lummis

In 1884, a 25 year-old Harvard dropout decided that he would walk from his home in Ohio to Los Angeles, where a job at the Los Angeles Times was waiting. He began his 3,507 mile walk along the railroad tracks, but eventually veered off of his intended path, encountering blizzards, bandits, mad dogs and mountain lions. Over the course of 143 days, Charles Lummis' adventure took him to remote places where he was exposed to vastly different cultures than anything he’d ever experienced in his life. 

Young Lummis was forever changed from his Tramp, and in his lifetime he wrote over 30 books, took thousands of photographs, founded the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles and became a powerful advocate for the Native-American and Hispanic peoples he would never have met, had he stayed home in the mid-west. He often called upon his friend and former Harvard classmate Teddy Roosevelt to further his causes, and he lived a vividly colorful and historically vibrant life.

Producers Jayne McKay and Jonathan Spaulding are currently penning the script for this exciting tale of Charlie's adventures, as well as planning an ambitious new Tramp Across the Continent in Spring 2015.We are working on the details and will keep you posted.

We hope that you will consider joining us-this is going to be quite an experience!