"This Land is Your Land" WebQuest

During the 1930s, life was difficult for many Americans This was the time of the Great Depression, the worst economic disaster in the history of the United States. People were out of work everywhere. In many cities, unemployed workers stood in long lines at soup kitchens for free meals. They also went to relief offices for government money to buy clothes, to pay rent and to buy gasoline for their cars. 

Life was even more difficult for farmers in the middle of the United States. There, many years of drought and high winds created the "Dust Bowl." Crops died in the dry soil and farmers could not pay their bills. Thousands lost their farms and left the Midwest for California. In their new lives, many farm families worked in the fields of large farming companies for little pay.

Photographers took many pictures of the farm families as they moved west. These pictures tell stories of the sadness and hopelessness they saw. It was a terrible time that many Americans have forgotten.

Go to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/maps/ to see where the Dust Bowl was. Name the states on your WebQuest answer sheet.

Look at the pictures below. Answer the questions on your WebQuest worksheet:

#1 Waiting in line for a "5-cent meal"	#2 Camp of migrants moving to California	#3 Shacks for the unemployed
#4 Children playing in a migrant camp	#5 Fixing a fence on a Dust Bowl farm	#6 Dust Bowl farms for sale
#7 Fixing a flat tire on the way to California	#8 Selling the family farm	#9 Getting a free meal
#10 Picking beets in California	#11 Home for a migrant farm family	#12 From farmer to hobo
#13 Abandoned farm in the Dust Bowl	#14 Farm buildings buried by blowing dust	#15 "20 meals for $1. Donations invited."
#16 Unemployed man in front of empty store	#17 Jobless men not welcome	#18 "Okies" leaving the Dust Bowl
#19 Farmer's wife living in a tent	#20 Migrant farm families cooking outside	#21 Lining up at the relief office