Secret Walks #24, Sousa-Lummis Walk, 3 miles.

Back for our fourth trek in Highland Park, one of the oldest settled neighborhoods of Los Angeles, incorporated into L.A. in 1895. We started at the Hiner-Sousa Bandshell in Sycamore Grove Park for a hike around a section of L.A.'s oldest freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway. Walk along a highway? Barbara and I go anywhere Charles Fleming's Secret Walks book takes us, but for the first half of the walk we wondered what could be special about this one. Then we reached the Avenue 43 bridge and things got interesting. First stop, El Alisal ("place of the Sycamore Trees"), the stone, hand-built home of Charles Fletcher Lummis, L.A.'s first great preservationist. When the L.A. Times offered this Cincinnati journalist a job in 1884, Lummis WALKED the 3500 miles to L.A.—our kind of guy. His 143 daily missives to the paper about Southwest American Indian culture made him famous along the way. This restless womanizer, drunk, and civil rights activist—in no particular order—became the first city editor of the L.A. Times, and eventually the city's chief librarian. The next turn led us to the stunning, open-air, living-history Heritage Square Museum, home to 8 relocated historic buildings. Pictured below, 1875's Palms Depot, 1876's white Mount Pleasant House aside 1887's Victorian Hale House. By this time Barbara and I were completely bummed because we came too early for tours through both the Lummis House and the Heritage Museum, and vowed to return for a full "Highland Park Museum tour." The bike path on the east side of the freeway took us over a bridge, down some stairs, through a tunnel, and back to the car. Walking history is fun.