Noah Coughlan doesn’t really stand out as he walks through Sweet Home on Friday, May 22.
Wearing a small backpack and a brimmed cap, he strides purposefully along the Main Street sidewalk, heading west.
Some days he’s running, but this is Day 217 of his fifth run across the United States.
He’s tired. He has a brace on one knee and his ankle is wrapped.
“You walk on the left side of the road for 15,000 miles, things start to fall apart,” he said as he took a water break on the side of the road at the intersection of Pleasant Valley and Main Street, where a reporter found him.
Normally, he’d be pushing a jogging stroller with an American flat mounted on it, but today the flag’s in his backpack. He’s headed for Newport, where he plans to arrive, weather permitting, on Memorial Day weekend.
Rain is not his friend when he’s walking along the sides of highways. Neither are narrow shoulders, like the ones he’s just followed down the mountain into Sweet Home.
“I’m almost 4,750 miles in, a 5,500 total projected,” Coughlan said. “I didn’t feel like pushing the jogger stroller through the hills any more.”
So, why is he here?
This is his fifth run/walk across the United States and Oregon is the 48th state he’s crossed. He plans to traverse Alaska, then fly to Hawaii, where he plans to complete his journey through the 50th state – literally – on July 4, 2026, the Semiquincentennial anniversary of the United States.
Coughlan’s runs have all been for causes, but along the way he’s also realized he has a chance to make history and promote solidarity.
This also is his last, he says.
His first was in 2011, the Run for Research, which took him from San Diego, Calif., along the southern border states to Jacksonville, Fla. The goal of that 2,500 mile, spanning 132 days was to raise awareness for Batten disease, a rare fatal genetic disorder that affects the nervous system, from which two of his friends suffered.
In 2013 he did Run for Research II, again to raise awareness for Batten with a 3,100-mile, 107-day cross-country trek from Half Moon Bay, Calif., to Boston, Mass.
Run for Rare, his third, took place in 2015, 3000 miles from New York City to San Diego, dipping through the states between the ones he’d already traversed in his first two crossings. The goal this time was to honor the 30 million Americans with rare diseases.
His fourth, Run for Revival: A Tribute to the American Soldier, took him 3,600 miles from Blaine, Wash., on a southeast diagonal, through northern states that he hadn’t yet traversed, to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. That one was for World War II veterans, “because they’re declining rapidly; there’s not so many of them,” he said.
In 2020 he took on a 600-mile run across Ireland, where he has dual citizenship, from Cobh to Downings to Galway to Dublin, spanning 32 days to honor the 700,000 Irish with rare diseases, and support The Children’s National Ambulance Service.
This last trip started last Oct. 18. He ran through Kansas, then South Carolina and North Carolina, states he’d missed in previous crossings, before heading to Maine to begin the home stretch – across the northern states to Oregon, picking up all the rest he’s missed thus far.
“It’s a chance to make history, to be the third person ever to cross all 50 states on foot,” said Coughlan, 42.
“I want to do it in an honorable fashion, do it in a historic fashion. The whole thing’s called ‘Run for America.’ It’s more of an observation of our very existence as Americans, as opposed to doing something with any political agenda.
“I didn’t intend to do all 50 states when I first set out my first round. It was just very humble beginnings; I wanted to help some kids with a rare brain disease for my church in Northern California.”
In 2018 he moved from Vacaville, on the north edge of the Bay Area, to Nashville, Tenn. typically works as a bartender between his cross-country journeys. He’s not married.
Coughlan said he played typical sports – football, basketball, baseball in high school. He wasn’t much of a runner until he decided to go cross-country, he said.
His trip through Oregon has been tough, he said, and he got concerned about safety, running along the shoulder of Highway 20 through the Cascades. That’s when he decided to put the jogging stroller away for a while and rely on his support crew – last week it was his cousin, driving a rental car.
“Two hundred and fifty miles of the Great Basin? Coming from Nyssa? It’s pretty dead out there. And then, all of a sudden, you have mountains. And all it takes is one bad move, and you’re a bug on a windshield. Yep. Yep. Hence, the safety reason. So sometimes it’s best to go without the jogger. So now that I have some support finally here, I said, ‘I’m just walking.’”
If all goes well, he’ll be in Hawaii by the Fourth, because this run is really about being a patriot.
He carries the flag for that reason, though, he acknowledged, he’s realized it also provides a bit of a safety factor because it gets people’s attention.
“You start to realize the flag has a lot more meaning than me and you,” Coughlan said. “It’s bigger than me and you, right? It’s bigger than any one person.”
He’s had lots of media attention and he’s had police escorts, though he moved through Sweet Home unnoticed until a reader who’d seen Coughlan’s social media posts alerted the newspaper.
“The intention of the run is to highlight the American people,” he said. “It’s not political in any way. It has nothing to do with political parties. There’s no huge brands. It’s just me.”