Farm Labor Camps: A Look Back at How America Solved the Crisis During the Great Depression...Ditch camp settlements. Hoovervilles

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Providing housing for seasonal agricultural workers has been a traditional obligation of the employer or at least an expectation by the work force. Historically, the United States has managed worker housing from something as simple as providing an outbuilding or camping space all the way to developed company towns. Some of these communities went on to grow into cities like Hershey, Pennsylvania or Pullman, Illinois. Other communities faded away after the precious metal was mined out or the economy changed.

In the 1930s when America was reeling from the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Southwestern states hit by the Dust Bowl, flocked to the West Coast. Some estimates put this number at three million displaced workers during a seven-year time span. California’s rich central valley with its long growing season and ongoing need for hand pickers bore the brunt of this migration. Known by the epithet of “Okies,” these workers lived in cars, tents, and hastily erected shacks along ditch bank settlements often called “Hoovervilles.” Life in these camps was difficult. There was no access to clean running water, no provision for food, sanitation or medical treatment

In 1935, the Federal Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration began to establish organized migratory labor camps to house the destitute migrants. Of the three federal camps built in the valley by the Works Progress Administration, two were located in Kern County. One of the first camps was at Shafter, and the second was the Sunset Labor Camp built in the small community of Weedpatch south of Bakersfield in 1936.








Where the White people reparations???




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