Trials and Triumphs: A Colorado Portrait of the Great Depression With Fsa Photographs

About this book

From the time of the stock market crash of 1929 to the return of prosperity in 1940-1941 Colorado suffered and overcame an unparalleled economic collapse. As banks and businesses failed Coloradans struggled to rebuild their lives and the states economy creating in the process a tumultuous and fascinating decade. In Trials and Triumphs historian Stephen Leonard blends exhaustive research and more than 150 photographs including a striking selection from the Farm Security Administration (FSA) collection to bring 1930s Colorado alive. Leonard tells the story of ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances fighting for food shelter and dignity: dry-land farmers coping with dust storms; miners attempting to unionize; Hispanic farm laborers struggling to survive; and thousands of people mailing chain letters filled with dimes. Trials and Triumphs also explores the decades personalities events controversies and accomplishments. Among them were powerful governor Big Ed Johnsons fight against the supporters of FDRs New Deal; the Works Progress Administration and the huge federal projects that provided thousands of jobs; Johnsons 1936 blockade of the states southern border against aliens and indigents; the violent Green Mountain Dam strike; the floods of 1935; the origins of the ski industry; the football wizardry of Byron "Whizzer" White; the birth of the devil baby; and the death of Baby Doe Tabor. Trials and Triumphs is a masterful account of depression-racked Colorado and its people in the 1930s. It belongs in the library of every reader interested in Colorado and modern U.S. history.