I already said you are right. No one ever got in a wagon and went West. All lies!
Sure, lots of folks went West, however only a tiny few 200 years ago, and most of those few stopped in the Midwest. The number who went to California as illegal immigrants 200 years ago was minuscule, perhaps non-existant.
You probably are ignorant of the Homestead Act of 1862 (AFTER California became part of the USA). The purpose of that act, which gave away free land to those would go west was to encourage people to go west since so few had gone before that. Virtually all of those migrants stopped in the Midwest because that's where the free land was.
The Dust Bowl years (early 1930s) encouraged even more to go west as far as California. Those folks had roads, cars and trucks. They didn't throw a bedroll on Old Paint
You may be interested to know that California now has the greatest number of illegal immigrants of any state, probably 10,000X more than your imaginary illegal immigrants of 200 years ago.
Too bad you never took or paid attention in an American History class.
Ever hear the phrase - "There are none so blind as those who do not see"? There's a corollary: "There are none so dumb as those who do not know."
Riding a horse to California in 1819...hundreds of miles with no water, climbing the Rockies, sneaking into Mexico. Naw, they wouldn't have stopped in Kansas or Colorado .
LMAO!