From the small towns to the big cities.

We bring you the stories that matter.

This is.

This is.

This is the Our American Stories podcast, and we're bringing you an all-new format.

Instead of bringing you three stories once a week, you'll be getting five stories a week, one a day,

from Monday through Friday. And our first story this week is about a name we all know,

and you may even wear, but probably don't give much thought to. We love producing these

fantastic stories, and our team works hard day in, day out, to bring you

stories from the people that you often don't get to hear from, but that you should.

If you'd like to support us and all that we do, visit our Americanstories.com, click on the

donate button, and become a part of all that's going on here. We appreciate both one-time

gifts and monthly donations. It's for you and through

you that we tell these stories because it's you, the American people, who are the star of this show.

Now Greg brings us Lynn Downey and the story of the Jewish immigrant who gave blue jeans to the world.

Levi Strauss.

I was hired as the very first historian archivist for Levi Strauss & Co. in 1989.

And when I walked in the door, I was not too surprised that there weren't any historical records because of this. This is a picture of the company

headquarters April 20th, 1906, after the building has survived the massive earthquake, but not the fire.

It's not unusual. You go to work for a company in San Francisco that was founded before the earthquake.

You're not going to have much. So let's start with his beginning.

He was born Leub Strauss, L. O. Umlaut B. Strauss, February 26, 1829, in the Bavarian town of

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