Weedpatch Camp, California-- Part 1: Built By the WPA for Migrants

Before reading about this place in the Route 66 News, I'd never heard of it before, but definitely all that The Grapes of Wrath."

From Wikipedia.

Weedpatch Camp, California, also known as the Arvin  Federal Government Camp or the Sunset Labor Camp was built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA)  south of Bakersfield, California,  in 1936 to house migrant workers during the Great Depression.  Several historic buildings remain of the camp and have been placed on the NRHP as of January 1996.

The camp had its origins  in the migrations during the drought that caused the Dust Bowl in the mid-1930s.  Oklahoma was particularly hard hit. and many farmers and their families left because of it.  They migrated to California where they heard there were jobs and help.  Most became farm laborers.

They were joined by others from Texas, Arkansas and Missouri.  Housing for migrants consisted of squatter camps (essentially groups of tents pitched beside a road or camps established by farmers or growers.

--RoadBowl