Historical+Reference

**The Dust Bowl started in the 1930s and was primarily centralized in the Southern Plains region. It affected the states of New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado. There were hundreds of thousands of desperate farmers trying to find a new life and hope in California.
 * Historical Reference **

Farmers were forced to move because of banks and bigger businesses bought out their farms. They could not hold their own because the crop was being suffocated from the drought and dirt covering the plants.

Most of these migrants headed for the cities of California where they usually found jobs and a decent standard of living in fairly short order.

John Steinbeck wrote a set of newspaper articles that year depicting in similar terms the desperate plight of thousands. Then he sat down to write the book that became, three years later, //The Grapes of Wrath.//

Living conditions were beginning to improve in rural California thanks to federal aid programs and then to the World War II defense boom that pulled many of the migrants out of the fields and raised wages for those remaining.**