With more people living in desperate conditions, disease spread. The years 19 represented the peak migration years. Hundreds lived along irrigation ditches or in empty fields near the large ranches. The majority of the newcomers found shelter where they could. Still others offered only a patch of muddy ground to place a tent. Others provided cabins or one-room shacks.

Some growers allowed workers to stay rent-free in labor camps. The great Dust Bowl migration transformed and reshaped California for years to come.ĭust Bowl migrants had little food, shelter, or comfort. Two California governors and their administrations grappled with the influx of the hundreds of thousands who flooded the state throughout the 1930s. The photographs of Dorothea Lange, songs and lyrics of Woody Guthrie, and storytelling genius of John Steinbeck bring the era and people to life with their dramatic and poignant styles. This exhibit examined the cultural, social, and political impact the Dust Bowl migrants had on California. “The Dust Bowl, California, and the Politics of Hard Times” was exhibited at The California State Capitol Museum on June 17, 2013, until May 15, 2014. Three hundred thousand of the stricken people packed up their belongings and drove to California. The storms, years of drought, and the Great Depression devastated the lives of residents living in those Dust Bowl states. In the 1930s, a series of severe dust storms swept across the mid-west states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas.

Dust bowl the worst hard time