The migrants on the Great Highways

A series of articles that Steinbeck wrote concerning the situation of dust bowl refugees in California are collected in The Harvest Gypsies. In that work, Steinbeck observes:

“.. our highways swarm with the migrant workers, that shifting group of nomadic, poverty-stricken harvesters driven by hunger and the threat of hunger from crop to crop, from harvest to harvest, up and down the state …

"To the casual traveler on the great highways the movements of the migrants are mysterious if they are seen at all, for suddenly the roads will be filled with open rattletrap cars loaded with children and with dirty bedding, with fire-blackened cooking utensils" (19).  

Steinbeck’s descriptions come to life in the photographs on this page. Both pictures show the kind of jam-packed vehicles in which the migrants sought out work on roads such as Highway 66 and 99.