The Works Progress Administration (WPA), was a Federal agency created during the Great Depression to provide work for the unemployed. Workshops and theater companies produced plays. Public buildings were painted with magnificent murals. Parks and trails were constructed. A few such legendary names as Dorothea Lange, Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, Orson Welles and Sidney Lumet were given their start in the programs of the WPA.

Here in Los Angeles, the USC DIgital Archive has an astounding collection of color illustrated land maps which the WPA created from 1933-1939. 460 square miles were covered and the descriptions covered every type of possible land use in the 1930’s:

” 9 different types of farming (mixed, livestock, field crops, row crops, bush fruits, orchard, nursery, woodland, farming); Vacant; 16 residential classifications (broadly grouped as: single family residential; multiple residential (2 to 4 families); unlimited multiple residential (i.e. hotels, boarding houses, chicken or rabbit ranches, etc.)); Institutional; Commercial (31 classifications: i.e. undertakers, theaters, restaurants, etc.); Industry, utilities, recreational, agricultural, open uses, problem uses, combined uses, electric railway, steam railway; Manufacturing (30 classifications: i.e. cannery, oil well supply, ice manufacturing, motion picture studio, etc.)”

The above map shows Van Nuys. It is bounded by Oxnard on the South, Sepulveda to the West, Van Owen on the North and Van Nuys Boulevard to East. Most of the area to the west of Van Nuys Boulevard was agricultural. The red areas are commercial, the green ones are either farming or ranching, and the purple horizontal line is the Southern Pacific– which is now the MTA’s Orange Line “Busway”.

Click on the title above which links to the USC WPA website.