Courtesy Library of Congress

When Farm Security Administration photographer Dorothea Lange took this photo north of Amarillo in 1939, it was a (relatively) happy time for most Panhandle residents. The Dust Bowl and Great Depression were at their ends, and folks were preoccupied with getting on with their lives. They probably weren’t paying too much attention to what was happening in Europe and Japan and didn’t realize that, less than three years later, the United States would enter World War II.

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