Clash of Cultures & the Discovery of Gold      123456

The Dust Bowl Exodus — One of the Largest Migrations in American History

With their farmland stripped and their homes abandoned or seized in foreclosure, more than 2 million people fled the Dust Bowl. They came from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico. 40 percent of Oklahoma’s residents left the state. Between 315,000 and 400,000 of these poor and hungry families packed their meager belongings in cars and trucks and headed west to the Golden State.

Big agricultural farms needed workers to pick the crops, and they wanted them cheap. Flyers reached Dust Bowl-struck states promising abundant work in the fields. Newspapers and ads placed by California boosters promised a “poor man’s heaven,” with abundant crops and long growing seasons. The promise of work and the images of a sunny green landscape, trees dripping with ripe oranges and vineyards full of purple grapes, indeed pointed toward a happy new beginning.

The Road to California

Though the journey was not an easy one, the 1927 opening of the east-west interstate highway known as Route 66, later called the Main Street of America, provided migrants with a direct route to California.