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William S. Kirby (1843-1928) http://tinyurl.com/WKirby Click the below to hear radio segment.
Wagon Train Geography Lesson
From Drummer Boy of the Ozarks, or Episodes in the Life of Ben Elder, 1893. Read Online Download PDF Reader: Kevin Hearle

Drummer Boy of the Ozarks... final illustration, 1893. Larger.
The name "California" comes from a work of fiction, so it is perhaps fitting that people's notions about this place have long been shaped by misguided ideas about the geography of the Golden State.

In 1893, William S. Kirby, a sometime merchant, farmer and lawyer in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas wrote a quirky biography called Drummer Boy of the Ozarks, or Episodes in the Life of Ben Elder. One episode in that book is Ben Elder's youthful experience as part of a wagon train to California.
In 1873 Ben took it into his head to take a trip to California. Of course he had no idea about the distance. He says he thought it would be about like going to Uncle Mitch's in Arkansas.

So there was a man by the name of Ben Westmoreland making preparations for the trip, and Ben made up his mind to become one of his party and so made his arrangements.... About twenty-five men and boys, ten wagons with two families, about twenty horses and 700 head of cattle composed the lay-out.

"After we had traveled ten or fifteen days," says Ben, "I began to step very carefully when I was walking after dark, for fear that I would step right off into the Pacific ocean, but by the time we got to the western boundary line of Kansas I began to doubt there being any such place, and was not so afraid to step in a westward direction after dark."
Ben Elder fell sick before the wagons reached the Rocky Mountains and returned to Missouri. There is no record that he ever attempted again to go to California, but he lived to be an old man and served multiple terms as mayor of Mammoth Springs, Arkansas.