Leaning on a Legacy

The Great Depression took its toll on the pocketbooks and emotions of Oklahomans who lost their jobs as banks failed, businesses closed, and farm markets collapsed in the 1930s. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress created the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the largest of Roosevelt s New Deal programs designed to bring America back to good economic health. After 1939 the agency was known as the Work Projects Administration. The WPA was a work relief program that left a positive impression upon Oklahoma. Not only were workers able to earn enough money to feed their families, their work on WPA projects is a monument to the success of the program. All over Oklahoma are schools, public buildings, stadiums, armories, and parks still used 70 years after WPA workers built them. The WPA shield is permanently attached to hundreds of structures that have served their communities well. Not only did WPA leave a lasting legacy of buildings, many WPA workers learned trades fro