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 become 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 re-creations of a frontier town and a Native Ameri

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