New Deal Construction of Dams, Bridges, Roads, Across the Pacific Coast Documented in Large Album of 469 Photographs, 1932-1938

West Coast Industry New Deal

Archive

New Deal-era western construction and industrial expansion across California, Oregon, and Washington, recorded in an extensive family photo album with inscribed dates, locations and details. The album records the surge of dam, bridge, road, harbor, and flood-control work that followed Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal public works programs. The photographs record the individual impact of the 1935 Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, the Works Progress Administration, and earlier Public Works Administration funding which helped push thousands of men into construction work is documented. This album's years align with the federal agencies and private contractors shift to reshape western rivers, harbors, roads, and transportation infrastructure.

Photo archive of 469 photographs, mostly silver gelatin photos and with some real photo postcards, ranging from 2.5 x 4 to 5 x 7 inches, California, Oregon, and Washington, Arizonia, 1932-1938. The album includes extensive handwritten captions identifying Monterey, California breakwater work in 1932, Azusa road construction in San Gabriel Canyon in 1933, Bonneville, Oregon in 1934, Monterey Bay dragline work in 1934, San Francisco and Oakland Bay views, Hansen Dam shovel work, and family travel between Encinal, Washington and Oakland. Monterey pages record a shovel loading rock, trucks lined for breakwater work, a first load of rock, dumping rock from a pier, and Monterey Pier from the water. Azusa pages show a slide covering a shovel, a truck being let down a steep hill by cable, road cuts through canyon rock, and named men beside heavy trucks. Bonneville pages show “Dolph & a new Mack truck,” four new Mack trucks, a new car beside a shovel, men standing inside a shovel bucket, and a “50 B drag line” on the Columbia River. Additional construction scenes show electric shovels, steam shovels loading trucks, workers in quarries, tug crews, draglines extending over water, trestle rail lines, partially framed industrial buildings in San Francisco in 1937, and captioned men including Key, Dolph, Bill Reid, Pat, Al Bow, Irving, Pinky Hamlistall, and George Lamblet. Travel and family pages add a 1936 Oldsmobile, camp trailers, ferries, Treasure Island and the Bay Bridge, Oakland camps, Warrendale and Bonneville family portraits, sailors at a beer hall, Columbia River Highway views, and domestic scenes that place construction labor inside a wider pattern of westward automobile mobility. This album records the overlap between large-scale public works and ordinary itinerant life: heavy machinery, quarry crews, draglines, trestles, cofferdams, dump trucks, travel trailers, and family stops all appear. Many photographs document domestic life from family gatherings to celebrations of new born babies.
At its core, this album depicts regional power planning, flood control, military and commercial harbors, and the creation of automobile infrastructure which permanently altered the West Coast and Columbia River basin. Bonneville and Grand Coulee brought hydroelectric capacity, irrigation planning, and federal power policy into the center of Northwest development, while the Bay Bridge and related Oakland-San Francisco work changed metropolitan circulation around the bay. The captions repeatedly tie people to machines and locations, suggesting a family or work circle moving through construction jobs rather than a tourist album with incidental industrial views. Edge wear, chipping album leaves, worn spine and many loose pages; images remain clear, captions remain legible, and securely mounted or associated with their original pages. Overall in good condition. This archive documents the New Deal-era western construction through quarry faces, truck yards, draglines, ferry crossings, trailers, named workmen, and families following the work from site to site spanning the Bay Bridge to Hansen Dam.

Item #23406

Price: $1,250.00