During the Civil War, Griffith sold hundreds of tonnes of beef to the Unionist armies while at the same time doing the same for the Confederates. “Business has no politics,” is his motto. By the 1860s when army orders for bully beef have ceased and drought has killed off a great many head of cattle in southern California, John Strother Griffith is moving into land development – and using his formidable influence to bring the railroad to Los Angeles. As our story begins, ranching is a dying industry in south California, and yet Griffith seems to have endless funds for buying up the land of bankrupted landowners. His land agents are everywhere, but they do not advertise their business relationship to John Strother Griffith, who goes to extraordinary lengths to stay anonymous.

Ranchers who do not wish to sell are either coerced into reconsidering by bands of roving horsemen, or if this fails, there is a tendency for their outlying barns and buildings to burn down or for their wells to be ruined by rotting carcasses, mules or steers, being dropped into them. Ranchers also find some of their farm workers, especially if Mexican, Native American, or Chinese, shot dead out on the range. Such murders have not in the past even been regarded as crimes in south California, more as “acts of God.” This is about to change, as Griffith will find out – and he will defend himself against any imposition of law and order that challenges his position. He does not take kindly to a series of murder investigations opened by the Los Angeles police department, especially not when those investigations are handled by the zealous Emil Harris.

At first, Griffith is merely intent on buying the land, and his reasons for doing so remain a mystery both to Angelenos and the viewer. Later, as the series progresses, Griffith’s construction teams start putting up residential housing – often in the middle of nowhere, and even though there seems to be no one ready to move into the houses. He’s a church builder too – on Sundays he likes to take his “family” around his building sites. Each new suburb will have its own chapel – Griffith wants to be sure that no one doubts his Christian credentials.

Most of Griffith’s Los Angeles-related business dealings are handled in confidence by AJ King, the city’s District Attorney, who also happens to the head of the armed vigilante group known as the Knights of the Golden Circle.

As we find out much later, Griffith has been doing deals with the South Pacific Railroad company, learning in advance of the routing of the railroad and planning entire urbanisations along the new transport routes. In return he has offered profit shares to railroad executives. In practice it seems preferable to have some of them killed off rather than paying up. Griffith is also drilling for oil on the ranch lands he is purchasing, which is still at this time a novelty product, although it increasingly nets him enormous profits.

Following the national scandal of Los Angeles’s failure to secure convictions after the Chinese massacre, Griffith realises the way the wind is blowing. All his schemes for power and self-enrichment are going to fail if he does not instigate a thorough review of the city’s legal system – and rescue the reputation of Los Angeles. It must be seen as a place of law and order. He hires estate agents in New York to sell the American Dream in Los Angeles, California. And he cuts a secret deal with State Senator Charles Maclay. The way is opened for Maclay to purchase 58,000 acres of Indian territory and develop this into real-estate and housing. In return, Maclay agrees to back the appointment of Griffith’s nephew as Los Angeles’s new City Judge. Griffith impresses on his nephew that he must send some people to gaol for “killing those damned coolies….”

At the end of Season 2, Griffith is shot in cold blood by Rosa Ledda (see Additional Characters).