Browse Items (10 total)

Waiting for Work: Ex-tenant farmer from Texas, came to work in the fruit and vegetable harvests. Coachella Valley, California.

Example of self-resettlement in California. Oklahoma farm family on highway between Blythe and Indio. Forced by the drought of 1936 to abandon their farm, they set out with their children to drive to California. Picking cotton in Arizona for a day or…

Billboard along U.S. 99 behind which three destitute families of migrants are camped. Kern County, California.

Family walking on highway, five children. Started from Idabel, Oklahoma. Bound for Krebs, Oklahoma. Pittsburg County, Oklahoma. In 1936 the father farmed on thirds and fourths at Eagleton, McCurtain County, Oklahoma. Was taken sick with pneumonia and…

Family packed in a car, moving to California for a better, more prosperous life.

A native of Maine, Franklin Agustus Buck (1826-1909) was working in New York City when he heard of the gold strikes and set out for California in January 1849. A Yankee trader in the gold rush (1930) contains Buck's letters to his sister in Maine.…

Lucius Fairchild (1831-1896) left Madison, Wisconsin, for California in 1849 and remained in the West until 1858. On his return to Wisconsin, Fairchild carved out a remarkable career as a soldier-politician: serving in a Wisconsin regiment in the…

Poster for Federal Writers' Project of California advertising "American Guide Series" volume on California, showing hourglass.

Photo shows Florence Thompson with several of her children in a tent shelter as part of the "Migrant Mother" series. For background information, see "Dorothea Lange's M̀igrant Mother' photographs ..." http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html

Mother and father travel from Oklahoma to California with eleven children in search of stable farming due to drought.