Covered wagon arrives -- in 1944

Aug. 8, 1944: Henry Strickland, an Oklahoma rancher and nightclub owner, arrived in Hollywood with his family after a 105-day trip in a horse-drawn covered wagon “from Oklahoma City, down to El Paso, then across New Mexico, Arizona and into California,” The Times reported.

“Along last April,” the newspaper said, Strickland “got a hankerin’ for some more sunlight and a try at the cinema. So he loaded up the chuck wagon, hitched up the team, piled his family aboard -- wife, Nellie, and youngsters Sistie, 11; Henry, 3, and Jacky, 2 -- and started down the road.”

Arriving in the Los Angeles area, “the creaking little frontier scene moved conspicuously through El Monte,” the Times said.

“We’ve come 1,665 miles in 105 days, and we once come 43 miles in a day, sleepin’ just where we happened to stop and cookin’ our own chow,” Strickland told reporters. “But I wouldn’t do it again if you gave me the whole darn wagon fulla gold!”