Wilson McKenney, since 1952, has been Director of Publications and editor of the CTA Journal for the California Teachers Association, with offices in San Francisco.
Training for his career as a journalist began many years ago when he was a student in the Junior College at Compton, California. From school he went to Calexico, California, as an associate on the editorial and business staff of the daily Chronicle.
His employer, Randall Henderson, was so impressed with his ability and integrity that in 1933 they formed a partnership and bought the weekly Herald at Calipatria and McKenney became editor and publisher. In the meantime, during many camping trips on the desert they had discussed the possibilities of a magazine devoted entirely to the many facets of life on the desert. Convinced that there was a field for such a publication, they sold the Herald in 1937, and in November that year published the first edition of Desert Magazine at El Centro.
The pioneering of a new magazine proved a costly project. Two years later Desert was still operating at a loss, and McKenney, with a growing family at home, felt it necessary to seek a more remunerative field. During the next 12 years he published the LeGrand Advocate, the Yucaipa News, the Nevada City Nugget, and served a hitch in civilian war service at Winton, California.
It was during the nine years he spent as a reporter and editor in the Imperial Valley that he gathered the material for his Pegleg book. Nearly all his weekends were spent in the field, camping and exploring. His search for the lost Pegleg gold was limited to his brief association with Jake Webster, as related in his book, but during the years camped in Borrego Valley, the Chocolate Mountains and other terrain of the legendary Pegleg story he became well acquainted with the many versions of the Pegleg tale, and with prospectors who were searching for the black gold. In this book McKenney has brought together all the known variations of the fascinating story.
