Survey population growth and changing demographics, economic trends and cultural and artistic developments beginning in 1850 with statehood and continuing, decade-by-decade, to the end of the First World War. The growth and decline of natural resource development and other new industries will be examined to show that the pace of change was dramatic and opportunistic. Look at these dramatic changes, in part, through the lives of several individuals, including: Leland Stanford, whose career began as a hardware merchant in Sacramento; Thomas Hugh Steel, an educator and gold miner who emigrated from New York to California during the Gold Rush era; and John Muir, who arrived in California as an officer for the U.S. Coast Survey in 1868.