Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 376

California Joe's First Trail This weekly Beadle and Adams publication (October 7, 1884) features the opening installment of "California Joe's First Trail: A Story of the Destroying Angels" by Colonel Thomas Hoyer Monstery. Set during the California Gold Rush, the narrative follows a wagon train of four vehicles containing two families—the Scott family from Tennessee and Pierre Gabelle's French-Creole family—camped on the Kansas River near Independence, Missouri. The story introduces California Joe, a lean twenty-year-old Kentuckian who joins the caravan seeking fortune in California after romantic entanglement at home. A second stranger soon arrives: a meek, long-haired Methodist preacher in black broadcloth accompanied by a small mule named Charity. The preacher's arrival unsettles the Scotts, who extend considerably less hospitality than they showed California Joe. The narrative establishes frontier social dynamics and hints at coming conflict through the title's reference to "Destroying Angels."