Many people traveled to California from all over the country in the 1930’s seeking work due to the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. They traveled in many vehicles, by trains, trucks, cars and many were homemade trailers. Some even walked. Dorothea Lange, photograher captured many of these various modes of transportation. The song, A Traveler’s […]
(I imagine there were many deaths from just breathing this air for so many years.) Where would you go if you saw this coming toward you? Dust bowl refugee from Chickasaw, Oklahoma. Imperial Valley, California. “Black Sunday, 1934, that was the awfullest dust we ever did see” photographer Dorothea Lange Abandoned farm of the […]
I remember by Joyce Ray Wheeler “I remember, I remember the house where I was born.” This is the first line of a poem Mrs. Iva Butram had her fourth graders memorize at Rocky Hill School in 1935. Yes, I do remember “the house where I was born.” It stood in the middle of little […]
The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dry land farming methods to prevent wind erosion. Farmer and sons walking in the face of […]
Great Depression and Dust Bowl Between the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, families had no other course but to leave the prairie lands and immigrant to the western states to become migrant workers. Below are vivid photographs documenting the difficulties they encountered on the road and interviews by the WPA with four men, Wayne […]
Another forgotten story for women’s history month Webster, Massachusetts seems to be rather forward thinking for the time in allowing a girl to play on a boys’ high school baseball team. And what is amazing is that she was the STAR player. The story about Nellie Twardzik made it all the way to a deep south newspaper, […]
Cotton farming was a major product at the Lake Dick Project in Arkansas but it was hard, grueling and back breaking work as can be seen in these photographs taken by Russell Lee in 1938. Young children often went to the cotton fields with their parents Overseer of Cotton pickers Day Laborers were hired as […]
These remarkable photographs taken by Russell Lee show farming equipment, techniques of haying and sorghum making in October 1938. How times have changed! Member of Lake Dick Cooperative Association, Lake Dick Project, Arkansas Cleaning vats used in production of syrup from sorghum, Lake Dick Project, Arkansas Stripping sorghum prior to crushing. Sorghum mill at […]
Ropesville is a city in Hockley County, Texas, United States. Ropesville, The Ropesville Resettlement Project began in 1934 in conjunction with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the community exists to this day. Resettled family, formerly renters. Ropesville rural community, Texas by photographer Arthur Rothstein in April 1936 Resettled farmer terracing part of […]
Rare! 1938 film of Lake Dick, Arkansas with photographs As a result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s interest in assisting the rural poor during the 1930’s Depression, the Resettlement Administration was established. Lake Dick was one of these Resettlement projects near Althimer, Arkansas. It was part of the governments efforts to help sharecroppers establish their […]
