Russell Lee's Farm Security Administration
Photos of Mission Beach
Amusement Park:
May 1941





    

Russell Lee was an American photographer and photojournalist, best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). His images documented the ethnography of various American classes and cultures.  In the fall of 1936, during the Great Depression, Lee was hired for the federally-sponsored Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographic documentation project of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. He joined a team assembled under Roy Stryker, along with Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein and Walker Evans. Stryker provided direction and bureaucratic protection to the group, leaving the photographers free to compile what in 1973 was described as "the greatest documentary collection which has ever been assembled."  Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, taken in 1936 in Nipomo, California is one of the iconic photos of the collection.  (Lee's photo captions below are in italics)

Mission Beach Dance Hall, Amusement Center, Mission Beach

(The BK on the drum head indicates the band is The Prince of Pep, Boyd Kellar,
who appeared at the Mission Beach Ballroom on May 3, 1941




Fortune teller and crowd at Mission Beach Amusement Center




Marines riding the electric automobile at Mission Beach Amusement Center




Sailors boarding a bus at Mission Beach Amusement Center