Oklahoma Primary Sources: Dust Bowl

Between 2000 and 2001 interviews were conducted with more than one hundred women individually and in groups who lived through the Dust Bowl, primarily in the seven western-most counties of Oklahoma, where the Dust Bowl hit the hardest.

A series of oral history interviews focusing on residents who migrated to the San Joaquin Valley from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas between 1924 and 1939.

Letters digitized by Mount Holyoke College Archives documenting Caroline's daily activities and difficulties, including the Dust Bowl, on the family farm in Oklahoma.

A bibliography of sources on the Dust Bowl prepared by Charles Buckner and updated by Jennifer Paustenbaugh

Sanora Babb wrote Whose Names Are Unknown at the same time Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, using much of the same research material. While both novels are about displaced farmers coming to California, they’re very different books. Babb’s novel is a carefully observed portrayal of several families that draws on her Oklahoma childhood. Steinbeck’s work, considered his masterpiece by many, is a sweeping novel bursting with metaphor and imagery. See Smithsonian article