Between 1930 and 1940, roughly 3.5 million people left the Great Plains for California. The drought that killed their crops went on for almost a decade. Banks foreclosed on farms that had been in families for generations. The only road most of them knew headed west — Route 66.
The migration has been romanticized so thoroughly by literature and photography that it can be hard to see the actual human mechanics of it. A family from southwestern Oklahoma in 1935 would have owned a car — maybe — and had some cash from selling off their furniture. They’d have known roughly that California had farm work because they’d seen handbills. They’d have driven through New Mexico on roads that weren’t always paved, through Arizona desert in July, with kids in the back seat and a radiator that overheated every forty miles.
The California they arrived at was not the California the handbills advertised. Growers had flooded the labor market deliberately, which meant wages were below subsistence level. The state briefly set up a border checkpoint in 1936 to turn back people it deemed too poor to contribute. The Los Angeles police sent officers to the Arizona border for the same purpose.
Some families made it work. Others spent years in labor camps, moving with the harvests, never quite getting ahead. Some eventually went home. The road that had carried them west turned into a road back.
Route 66 carried the dreams of a generation and also the evidence that dreams don’t come with guarantees. The mother road doesn’t promise anything. It just keeps going west, indifferent and available, waiting for whoever needs it next.
We are offering licences for ROUTE 66® Beer in specific territories. An invitation to others to become part of this story. To carry a piece of the road with them and to contribute to the story. We will share a percentage of royalties with Route 66 associations to keep the story alive.
The journey continues. This story is brought to you by ROUTE 66® BEER. Find us at ROUTE66BEER.COM
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