The WPA Farm-to-Market Roads of California

 
Above: "Valley Farms," an oil painting by Ross Dickinson (1903-1978), created while he was in the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project, 1934. The scene is a "magical image of California's farm country." Image and quote from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Above: A WPA poster. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Above: A WPA Farm-to-Market road project in Alameda County, California, ca. 1935-1943. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.

Above: A graphic from the WPA booklet, Jobs: The WPA Way, ca. 1937. The caption for it reads: "The mileage of farm-to-market roads improved by WPA workers [across America]... would stretch... five times around the world."

Hundreds of thousands of miles of rural roadwork!

Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA built, repaired, or improved 572,000 miles of rural roads across the nation (enough roadwork to go around the Earth 23 times). The final report on the WPA explains that much of this work consisted of "farm-to-market roads (ordinarily surfaced with gravel or crushed stone or left unsurfaced), which increased the farmers' opportunities to market their goods and made it possible for the inhabitants of rural areas to take advantage of cultural and educational opportunities in neighboring cities" (Federal Works Agency, Final Report on the WPA Program, 1935-43, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947, p. 53).

In May 1941, the WPA issued a report of work performed in Southern California from 1935-1941, including rural and Farm-to-Market roads. For example: In Orange County, 55 miles of such roads had been constructed or improved; 73 miles in Los Angeles County; 778 miles in San Bernardino County; and 608 miles in San Diego County. (From various newspaper articles, e.g., "Construction by W.P.A. Since 1935 Reviewed," The San Bernardino County Sun, May 20, 1941, p. 5).

"[B]y our program of rural electrification, by our farm-to-market roads, by our aid to rural schools, we have begun to get for the farmer his fair share in the comforts, the advantages, the wider interests and the deeper satisfactions which go to make the good life for himself and for his children."

--President Franklin Roosevelt, Address at Omaha, Nebraska, October 10, 1936