Red Dust or Bust: The Mass Exodus in the 1930s


  Most of the images that we associate with the Great Depression
come directly from John Steinbeck: displaced families tying all their
belongings onto the sides of their cars, following the western trail to
the fertile lands of California. The Grapes of Wrath correctly
illustrated what happened to many Red River families - they were
displaced by the simple yet efficient tractor.

 Farm mechanization meant that those who had access to a tractor
could get their goods to market quicker.  It also meant that to be
profitable in a world of agricultural glut (the global market faced as
much overproduction as the U.S. market), more land had to be
farmed. While in the eastern Red River Valley, cotton was still king,
the prevailing economic system of the South - sharecropping -
proved unsustainable next to more cost efficient tractors. In the
western Red River valley, where drought had a devastating effect,
banks foreclosed on the land and sold large tracts to commercial
farming operations.

 Thousands of farmers, workers, and sharecroppers left the Red
River Valley to head west, trying to find work in the California
vegetable fields. They faced horrible hardships, from unjust labor
practices to outright starvation. Suddenly, the occupation that once
was able to sustain entire families couldn't even feed one person.
Along with the dust, the family farm went up in the sky. That must
have been the hardest irony of all.
Old gas station pump.
Near Terral, Oklahoma.
Abandoned house in a dusty
field, Oklaunion, Texas.
Depression-era Farm Insurance
building, Pecan Gap, Texas.
The Dust Bowl -
End of an Era