Arrival of Dustbowl Deportees in California

The migration of the Dustbowl deportees, also known as the “double whammy”, was a period of time in the 30’s where hundreds of thousands of people migrated away from the “Great Plains” of Oklahoma to the west. The Dust Bowl was the cause of these great moves because tons of farmers and as well as other civilians were suffering from the drought that was occurring. It depressed the economy and people were very desperate for jobs. Therefore, people were forced to migrate to the west and head towards places such as California hoping to find jobs on farms and other labor of the sort. These people were dubbed the “Okies” and after many years, the economies of California, Oregon and Washington were restored and kept on growing. There were other reasons that people moved west. One was that other relatives had moved west and another was California had been advertising itself for along time as a place where people can go to live prosperous lives as well as finding adequate work.