August 1939. Yakima Valley, Washington. Shacktown community, mostly families from Kansas and Missouri. This family has five children, oldest in third grade. Rent $7 per month, no plumbing. Husband earns Work Projects Administration wages, $44 per month. View full size. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

July 1939. Women of the congregation of Wheeler's Church on steps with brooms and buckets on annual clean up day. Gordonton, North Carolina. View full size.

July 1939. Farm boy in the doorway of a tobacco barn. Person County, North Carolina. View full size. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

August 1939. Three of the four Arnold children outside their farmhouse at Michigan Hill. The oldest boy earned the money to buy his bicycle. Thurston County, western Washington. View full size. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

July 1939, Person County, North Carolina. Wife and child of tobacco sharecropper. The littlest girl comes in from outside for something to eat while Mother is doing her housework. The child next to the baby is called in this country the "knee baby." View full size. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

August 1939. Migratory children living in "Ramblers Park." They have lived on the road for three years. Nine children in the family. Yakima Valley, Washington. View full size. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

Coldwater District north of Dalhart, Texas. This house is occupied; most of the houses here have been abandoned. View full size. Photo by Dorothea Lange.

October 1939. Baby from Mississippi in truck at the Farm Security Administration camp at Merrill, Oregon. View full size. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

August 1939. Marion County, Oregon, near West Stayton. Children in large private bean pickers' camp. The pickers came from many states, from Oklahoma to North Dakota. View full size. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

August 1939. Yakima Valley near Wapato, Washington. Farm Security Administration client Chris Adolph. "My father made me work. That was his mistake, he made me work too hard. I learned about farming but nothing out of the books." View full size. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

Today, the first installment of another selection of photos by Dorothea Lange of Midwesterners en route from the drought-stricken farms of the 1930s Dust Bowl to California, Oregon, Washington and the South. The captions are hers.

August 1936. Family between Dallas and Austin, Texas. The people have left their home and connections in South Texas, and hope to reach the Arkansas Delta for work in the cotton fields. Penniless people. No food and three gallons of gas in the tank. The father is trying to repair a tire. Three children. Father says, "It's tough but life's tough anyway you take it." View full size. Photo by Dorothea Lange.

Oregon, August 1939. "Unemployed lumber worker goes with his wife to the bean harvest. Note Social Security number tattooed on his arm." (And now a bit of Shorpy scholarship / detective work. A public records search shows that 535-07-5248 belonged to one Thomas Cave, born July 1912, died in 1980 in Portland. Which would make him 27 years old when this picture was taken.) Medium format safety negative by Dorothea Lange. View full size.

May 1939. Between Tulare and Fresno on U.S. 99. Farmer from Independence, Kansas, on the road at cotton chopping time. He and his family have been in California for six months. View full size. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

August 1936. Drought refugees from Abilene, Texas, following the crops of California as migratory workers. Said the father: "The finest people in this world live in Texas but I just can't seem to accomplish nothin' there. Two year drought, then a crop, then two years drought and so on. I got two brothers still trying to make it back there." View full size. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

September 1939. "On the road with her family one month from South Dakota. Tulelake, Siskiyou County, Calif." Photo by Dorothea Lange. View full size.