When the kingdom was but an idea

Walt Disney Family Museum charts the evolution and early days of Disneyland.

- TODD MARTENS

HARPER GOFF'S early 1950s concept art for Main Street, U.S.A., is displayed at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. Its latest exhibit unveils early maps and celebrates lesser-known designers.

Walt Disney Co. likes to resurrect a famous Walt Disney quote saying that the empire was "started by a mouse.

But when it comes to Disneyland, its theme park that became a SoCal institution, fans and history buffs crave specifics.

A new exhibit at San Francisco's Walt Disney Family Museum aims to chart the beginnings and early evolution of the Anaheim resort, and it begins with a trip Disney took with friend, animator and fellow train aficionado Ward Kimball to Chicago. The Midwest city, as many know, is Disney's birthplace, but in 1948 he and Kimball embarked on a vacation to that city's railroad fair.

At the festival, they enjoyed not only locomotives, but also an Abraham Lincoln impersonator, and expansive grounds that featured small recreations of a frontier town and a Native American village, elements that would eventually make their way to Disneyland. And while in Chicago, the duo stopped at what is now the Griffin Museum of Science & Industry, home to a recreation of a turn-of-the-century city street.

By the time the trip had concluded, Disney's vision of Disneyland had begun to take shape. Within days of returning to Los Angeles, Disney had written a memo capturing his ideas that would ultimately appear in [See Disneyland, E2]

(Disneyland, from Et] Disneyland, including a train, a park and an assortment of vintage shops.

So perhaps it’s more accurate to say that, with Disneyland, it all started with a holiday to Chicago.