Levi Strauss was born to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Buttenheim on February 26, 1829 in the Franconia region of the Kingdom of Bavaria in the German Confederation. At age 18, Strauss traveled with his mother and two sisters to the United States to join his brothers Jonas and Louis, who had begun a wholesale dry goods business in New York City called J. Strauss Brother & Co. ] Levi became an American citizen in January 1853.

The family decided to open a West Coast branch of their dry goods business in San Francisco, which was the commercial hub of the California Gold Rush. Levi was chosen to represent them, and he took a steamship for San Francisco, where he arrived in early March 1854 and joined his sister's family.

Leland Stanford (March 9, 1824 – June 21, 1893) was an American tycoon, industrialist, politician, and the founder (with his wife, Jane) of Stanford University  Migrating to California from Watervliet, New York at the time of the Gold Rush, he became a successful merchant and wholesaler, and continued to build his business empire.

He spent one two-year term as Governor of California after his election in 1861, and later eight years as a senator from the state. As president of Southern Pacific Railroad and, beginning in 1861, Central Pacific, he had tremendous power in the region and a lasting impact on California. He is widely considered a robber baron