USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Although Oklahomans left for other states, they made the greatest impact on California and Arizona, where the term “Okie ” denoted any poverty-stricken migrant from the Southwest (Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas). From 1935 to 1940 California received more than 250, 000 migrants from the Southwest.

Detailed explanation-2: -The one-two punch of economic depression and bad weather put many farmers out of business. In the early 1930s, thousands of Dust Bowl refugees-mainly from Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico-packed up their families and migrated west, hoping to find work.

Detailed explanation-3: -Driven by the depression, drought, and the Dust Bowl, thousands upon thousands left their homes in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Over 300, 000 of them came to California. They looked to California as a land of promise. Not since the Gold Rush had so many people traveled in such large numbers to the state.

Detailed explanation-4: -Eight decades ago hordes of migrants poured into California in search of a place to live and work. But those refugees weren’t from other countries, they were Americans and former inhabitants of the Great Plains and the Midwest who had lost their homes and livelihoods in the Dust Bowl.

Detailed explanation-5: -"Okies, ” as Californians labeled them, were refugee farm families from the Southern Plains who migrated to California in the 1930s to escape the ruin of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.