As our parents and grandparents love to remind us, life wasn’t always like it is today. In 1935, America was dealing with the Great Depression and inching its way towards World War II. Check out these fascinating snapshots of everyday life in the United States back in 1935. Some things are familiar – families, kids, and shopping during the holidays – while other elements make the past feel like a different world.
- A store window display at Christmas.
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- Young family, penniless, hitchhiking on U.S. Highway 99, California. The father, twenty-four, and the mother, seventeen, came from Winston-Salem, North Carolina early in 1935. Their baby was born in the Imperial Valley, California where they were working as field laborers.
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- A deputy with a gun on his hip during the September 1935 strike in Morgantown, West Virginia.
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- A crowd saying grace before a barbeque was served at a Pie Town, New Mexico fair. That’s a 1935 Ford parked in the background.
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- President Roosevelt opening a baseball game in Washington D.C.
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- An archery group at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland.
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- A cooking class at Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland. Seems like this wasn’t an elective for gentlemen.
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- Unknown child photographed by Harris & Ewing. This baby might be someone’s great-grandparent today.
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- Shepherd with his horse and dog on Gravelly Range, Madison County, Montana.
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- Woman running a spinning wheel in Crossville, Tennessee.
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- The image’s description is as follows: “Texas tenant farmer in Marysville, California, migrant camp during the peach season. 1927 made seven thousand dollars in cotton. 1928 broke even. 1929 went in the hole. 1930 still deeper. 1931 lost everything. 1932 hit the road. 1935, fruit tramp in California.”
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- These two Venezuelan Boy Scouts walked 800 miles to attend a Boy Scout Jamboree in Washington D.C. Here, they are examining their boots after trudging 25 miles a day for two years in order to arrive on time on January 11, 1935. Rafael Petit, left and Juan Carmona, right.
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- Prospective homesteaders in front of a post office at United, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.
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- A young artist at a community kindergarten in Radburn, New Jersey.
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- Taking naps at a community kindergarten in Radburn, New Jersey.
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- A poor farming family in Georgia.
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- The giant “King Crab” of the Bering Sea was canned commercially in America for the first time in 1935. Prior to this shift, the U.S. imported ninety-five percent of its canned crab meat from Japan.
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- Tuberculosis “battle map,” shown by Mildred Showalter of Washington D.C., dressed as the Spirit of the Double-barred cross of the anti- tuberculosis movement. She points to places where war is being waged against the “White Plague.”
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- A squatter’s home in Arkansas.
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- The wife and child of a sharecropper in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana.
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- A street scene in Clarksville, Arkansas. Menu items include fresh field peas, stuffed eggs, sliced tomato salad, potatoes in cream, buttered okra, and caramel cream pie.
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Do you have similar photos from this time passed down to you by family members? Any stories told that were particularly fascinating? Feel free to share in the comments.
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Yale Photogrammer
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