After the Land Rush: Under the Bridge

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Secondhand row, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Oklahoma City seems to have an unusually large number of these cheap secondhand stores, probably because of the floating oil workers and currently shifting populations in surrounding rural areas: photo by Russell Lee, February 1940

What upon the land had not yet been stripped
away remained even more exposed
than before; out of the maze
of hovels and
warrens thrown
up at random upon the city
dump rose
the Mays Avenue
camp; ineffectual was
the prophylaxis
the drugstore
proffered; no paradise more
meagre
could have beckoned
than the secondhand store.

Street in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: photo by John Vachon, November 1942

Children at Mays Avenue camp playing under the bridge, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: photo by Russell Lee, July 1939

Photos from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress