Here is San Francisco during the gold rush through the eyes of a 25-year-old Vermonter and the first lawyer to hang out a shingle there, in 1849. Instrumental in founding the University of California, an early conservationist and advocate of national parks at Yosemite and Yellowstone, Frederick Billings was in later years president of the Northern Pacific Railroad when it crossed Montana, where the state's largest city is named for him.