In this exhibit, California is showcased and highlighted in a way it rarely is, away from the beauty of the coast and the glamour of its big cities. Instead, I seek to learn my adopted state's history and the incoming waves of people that made the state the powerhouse it is today, by exploring all they left behind. In the abandoned mining towns, old rest stops of Route 66, and worker communities that built the Transcontinental Railroad, a different, but perhaps more accurate portrait of California emerges; one of a state that has been built on the ambitious dreams of many different and diverse waves of inhabitants, of a land that can be equal parts beautiful and inhospitable, of a place that inspired hope in equal measure with which it dashed it.