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Snapshots in time Great Depression shooter Dorothea Lange chronicled Southern Oregon, too Comment By Edith Decker Grants Pass Daily Courier MailTribune.com By Edith Decker Grants Pass Daily Courier Posted Feb. 9, 2015 at 12:01 AM By Edith Decker Grants Pass Daily Courier Posted Feb. 9, 2015 at 12:01 AM » RELATED CONTENT • Dorothea Lange photographs Southern Oregon » Social News Dorothea Lange wasn't famous in 1939 when she came to Grants Pass to photograph hop picking and hop pickers for the U.S. government. She spent several days in August here and filed 36 photographs, not only of the hop harvest of 1939, but also picnickers in Riverside Park at a special California Day event. She also photographed a drugstore in Medford, the Chavner house in Gold Hill, and several people who remain unidentified. Other than her photographs, there's no record of her stay here — no note in the newspaper or photo of her under the "It's the Climate" sign. Lange is best known for her photo of a migrant mother, hand to her chin, with her children ducking behind her shoulders, shot in California. Yale University has gathered up the photos that Lange and dozens of other professional photographers took for the Farm Security Administration. The project lasted from 1935 to 1944 and the photographs are now available online, with many ways to search the archive at photogrammar.yale.edu. As Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal continued to try to help the poorest Americans, especially farmers, his programs came under fire. In an effort to build support for programs as well as document typical farming practices, the photographers were sent across the country in the midst of the Great Depression. Lange, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks and Arthur Rothstein were among the photographers who found not only a paying job with the FSA, but some of the most iconic images from the Great Depression. The photographers sent their negatives to Washington, D.C., and the collection grew to more than 110,000, of which nearly 90,000 were printed. After World War II began, the photographers were moved to the Office of War Information on the idea that securing American farming was vital to feeding the country and its troops in the coming conflict. The collection now belongs to the Library of Congress and nearly all images are in the public domain. In addition to Lange, photographer Russell Lee visited Jackson County and the Rogue River National Forest in 1942 for the FSA. His 29 photos of the woods, barns and haying, as well as Rogue River's bandstand and a sign in Ashland, are on the site. Lange was born in Hoboken, N.J. At age 7, she contracted polio. She survived, but had a slight limp all her life. Her parents were strong advocates of education and the arts, where Lange excelled, eventually choosing photography. She earned her way to Columbia University to study and then apprenticed for several photographers. By 1918, she was running a portrait studio in San Francisco and married muralist Maynard Dixon. They had two sons. When Dixon went to the Southwest for a mural job in the 1920s, she went along and enjoyed photographing the area and its people. In the 1930s, she divorced Dixon after meeting a university professor and labor economist who traveled the country, documenting the beginnings of the Great Depression. As a couple, Lange and Paul Taylor joined the Farm Security Administration. He did research and she took photographs. In 1940, Lange became the first woman awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. During World War II, she photographed the internment of Japanese Americans for the Office of War Information and later documented the conference that created the United Nations. After the war, she co-founded a publishing house for photography books called Aperture and did assignments for Life magazine. She died of cancer in 1965. What was Grants Pass like back then? What did Dorothea Lange find in Grants Pass in 1939 when she arrived to document the harvest of hops here? Based on articles in the Daily Courier during the time she was here, 19 hop yards were listed as needing hop pickers. Hop yard owners were estimating they'd pay out $100,000 in payroll to between 2,000 and 4,000 pickers over the harvest, in August and early September. The hops harvest typically brought a quarter million dollars to the county. The vast majority of the harvest went to beer brewers. Hop vines had first been grown in the county in 1885 by Albert Walcott at the Ranzau farm. A story from the Aug. 4, 1939, edition noted, "Not Prohibition, but the wild dreams of fruit planting led to the abandonment of hop growing as a major industry in the early 1900s." Fruit was overproduced on the West Coast, dropping prices, while pests in the Rogue Valley made growing fruit a risky proposition. That led to a comeback in hops by the mid-1930s. In 1939, over 1,000 acres in Josephine County were planted in hops, with yards all along the Rogue River and in the Applegate Valley. Poles and wires would be taken down and pickers would strip the hops from the vines into sacks or boxes. Pickers weighed their harvest and were paid at the end of the work day. The crop was then taken to a kiln to dry. In 1939, most pickers were earning 1-1/2 cents a pound. In the middle of the 1939 hop harvest, Hitler's forces invaded Poland, and World War II quickly became official. During the war, hops continued to be an important crop as soldiers and sailors appreciated their beer. Most hops were picked by local women and children. After the war, most local hop yards were leased by large hop companies, who brought in big machinery for the harvest. Many small yards discontinued hops in favor of other crops. When the John Haas Co. did not renew its lease on the remaining two yards in 1989, that harvest became the last in the county. Reach reporter Edith Decker at 541-474-3724 or [email protected]. By Edith Decker Grants Pass Daily Courier MailTribune.com By Edith Decker Grants Pass Daily Courier Posted Feb. 9, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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