I got to know the late Harold Miossi shortly after settling here after finishing grad school at Cal in 1976. I had the privilege of enjoying his occasional company until his death in 2006.
Harold’s name graces two fine concert venues—the PAC at Cal Poly and the CPAC at Cuesta College—as well as the city’s Miossi Open Space on Cuesta Grade. The Miossi Charitable Trust funds many worthy causes in this community.
In 1936, Miossi had just entered high school in the depth of the Great Depression. Somehow, he learned of a crisis facing more than 5,000 desperate migrant laborers on the Nipomo Mesa, idled by a hard freeze in the winter of 1935-36. In an essay for his English teacher at SLO High School, Harold told how he’d visited a makeshift “school” in an abandoned Pacific Coast Railroad warehouse in Nipomo: In that drafty barn with little lighting and boarded-up windows, a harried teacher shared a few tattered textbooks among tables and benches teeming with hungry children whose parents worked nearby to glean the few stalks of peas that had survived the freeze.
In 1936, California had no intention of becoming a “sanctuary state” for the migrant farm laborers such as those shivering tent dwellers in Nipomo. On the contrary, the LA police and then Gov. Frank Merriam implemented a blockade at the border to prevent more Dust Bowl families from entering the state.
One notable Nipomo family included seven gaunt children led by Florence Owens Thompson, 32, a native Cherokee who had traveled from Oklahoma with her children. They were barely holding it together in a lean-to beside their broken-down jalopy.
This hapless family drew the attention of Dorothea Lange, a traveling photographer who happened upon this labor camp in March 1936. The Resettlement Administration had hired Lange to record the living conditions of migrant workers throughout the nation. Her iconic Migrant Mother photograph of Thompson and her children inspired President Roosevelt, Congress, and the entire nation to come to the aid of these desperate workers throughout the United States.
In the face of staggering levels of unemployment, “Hoovervilles,” soup kitchens, and abandoned homes and farms and factories, FDR and his allies built an entire infrastructure—the New Deal—dedicated to that clause in the Preamble to the Constitution that called our nation into being in order to promote the general welfare.
The federal response was matched by an equally robust local response: Within a few months after Lange’s 1936 photograph of Thompson—and Miossi’s visit to that shabby warehouse “school”—county Superintendent of Schools Al Rhodes was on the case. Rhodes managed to find the resources to build a public school to serve those thousands of families huddled on the Mesa.
Rhodes would go on to serve as the county’s education czar for decades, earning a national reputation as a resolute advocate for rural education. In 2006, the Lucia Mar School District named its newest school in Nipomo for Dorothea Lange.
On this Labor Day, we need to acknowledge the great advances of the New Deal, especially workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively. Those rights are very much in peril now.
Our commitment to public education is also threatened. A cabal of right-wing “influencers” constantly seeks to undermine our public schools—including a candidate seeking to unseat our Democratic Assemblymember Dawn Addis.
Too many seem to have forgotten the lessons that people like Rhodes and Miossi embodied throughout their careers—especially this lesson, learned in the depths of the Great Depression: All children should receive the benefit of a quality, taxpayer-funded education.
Remarkably, the field on North Oak Glen Avenue where Dorothea Lange snapped her historic Migrant Mother photograph is still completely undeveloped.
Almost 10 years ago, I attended the 80th anniversary of the Migrant Mother snapshot along with Dan Krieger, his wife, Elizabeth, and dozens of local and out-of-state history buffs including the late Bill Denneen and former Supervisor Ruth Brackett. Those who knew Bill and Ruth understood they were sworn adversaries over many decades, but in March 2016 they found common cause in celebrating that anniversary.
We’re coming up now on the 90th anniversary of Dorothea Lange’s brief but consequential encounter with Florence Owens Thompson in Nipomo. I propose that we commit ourselves to a new purpose: Let’s create a Museum of the Great Depression in Nipomo at the site of that remarkable photograph.
There is no such museum anywhere in the nation. We have countless museums to commemorate the events of our Revolution, the Civil War, both world wars, 9/11—virtually every national calamity except that 1930s economic catastrophe that forged our national character and proved our resilience as a people.
There is no single piece of American geography that better represents that determination than an open field on North Oak Glen Avenue just north of West Tefft Street.
Miossi and Rhodes would know how to get it done. Do we? ∆
Respond to John Ashbaugh with a letter to the editor by sending it to letters@newtimesslo.com.
Correction, September 10, 2025 5:34 pm: This column has been updated to reflect the fact that the current Nipomo Men's Club building was not used as a school during the Great Depression.
This article appears in Sept 4-14, 2025.
“In the face of staggering levels of unemployment, “Hoovervilles,” soup kitchens, and abandoned homes and farms and factories, FDR and his allies built an entire infrastructurethe New Dealdedicated to that clause in the Preamble to the Constitution that called our nation into being in order to promote the general welfare.”
John Ashbaugh, last member of the last generation to enjoy the New Deal’s now tattered social safety net, finally gets it. For the rest of us, it’s all gone. In the face of runaway inflation due to numerous bank bailouts and giveaways called “foreign intervention,” social security checks will buy a bag of peanuts at most. John Ashbaugh, whose entire generation did nothing to protect or reinforce our social safety net, pines for what will never be. Sorry, John. Trump didn’t do it, mathematics did. We have no industrial base and export nothing, your generation strip mined it all. Our leaders, with the exception of FDR as you note, do what they always do, enrich themselves and their benefactors. Well, that’s run it’s course. You may not be around to see it, John, but the world has stopped buying our sovereign debt instruments, we owe 40 trillion dollars, and the federal government refuses to balance the budget, opting to borrow money rather than tax the rich. Our economy is about to collapse. Each party speaks platitudes about “morality” (including you), but, as Col. McGregor points out, practices vice( https://youtu.be/wMnRSxt2yco?si=0cnQX1UEx_… ). Show us the money, TAX THE RICH and tax John Ashbaugh.
John Ashbaugh, a self-licking ice cream cone, on his self-nailing cross, again. Why are the contributors to this gazette nothing more than self contented and well fed people of a certain age? They never speak of real Americans, their PARENT’S generation, whose shadow they will never get out from under and whose accomplishments can never get enough credit. John’s generation neatly place themselves between saints and the rest of us, sinners. It’s as if they never existed when in reality, it is they who lit the sulfur we are choking on. To them, their only purpose is to instruct us on what is right and what is wrong, real Bodhisattvas they are, right? A generation of lambs, lol. All that disco and cocaine in the 70s was just terrible, the poor dear.
Fly, some of us fought disco as hard as we fought oligarchy. What are you Xers doing about your manosphere?
Mr. Ashbaugh is exhibiting revisionist history in this letter. 1. “thousands of families” a brash overstatement. 2. The Nipomo Men’s Club building was transferred from a military base, post 1945. 3. The Nipomo Men’s Club is owned by it’s member’s and does not function as a bar. It has limited events for members only.
The Dana Adobe already exhibits the historical perspective he is hijacking to enforce his political comment. It would be nice if he put is unsolicited advice and money into that already existing historical landmark and museum.
Mr. Ashbaugh please leave Nipomo and your non-realty based statements out of your rhetoric.
Steve:
I thank you for your efforts, it sounds like you and your band of auditory partisans sniped at the likes of Gloria Gainer and placed TnT under the tracks on albums by The Village People.
My generation is just as sold out as yours, I try and listen to KCPR as much as I can and refuse to listen to The Eagles, Metallica, or The Doobies. Instead, I like Fleet Foxes, Tennis, and Death Cab for Cutie (whom I’ve seen live at the Hollywood Bowl). I’m in my mid 50s, lol. Stay young, listen to indie music.
Thomas Geaslen:
Please more.
I attended a reverse drawing at the Nipomo Mens Club several years ago and had a drink from a functioning bar on the premises that took payment for my drink.
A bar in Nipomo? Must have been just like that one in Star Wars.
Welcome, Tom Geaslen, to the Comments feature on New Times! It seems that you’ve chosen to do so for the first time in response to my column about Nipomo. It is helpful to learn from you that the current building occupied by the Nipomo Men’s Club, which I described as “shambolic,” was actually NOT the building that was in use as a school serving migrant children in the 1930s. According to your post, the building now situated at 210 Tefft Street has its provenance in a nearby military base. Could you provide more information about its original use by the military? Also, was the Men’s Club the same organization that transferred it to Nipomo in 1945? What’s the history of this organization? Do you happen to know the earlier location of the building – i.e., which one of the MANY WW II-ERA bases on the Central Coast?
If you cannot help with these inquiries, could you please refer me to other knowledgeable members of the Men’s Club? How could I become a member of this organization? Could I at least visit this fine establishment and buy you an adult beverage so that we can talk about it? (maybe, like Groucho Marx, you would suggest that I take his advice and refuse to join any organization that would have me as a member?)
In spite of a diligent online search for any information about the activities of the Nipomo Men’s Club, I could find nothing about the organization that would have helped better inform this column. I even visited the buildings – staying just short of trespass – a few years ago, but I could find no sign of any activity. The phone number on the building ((805/720-0027) is answered only by a recorded message that it is unavailable “because of calling restrictions.”
Before my column is shared with any social media or other publications – e.g., the Santa Maria SUN — I will do my best to correct the discrepancies that you have identified.
As to the number of impoverished families of migrant laborers that occupied the tent camp(s) on the Nipomo Mesa, I’ve come up with a range of 2,500 to 5,000 persons from the various sources that I consulted. The lower figure is found on p. 81 of Doug Jenzen’s wonderful book on “Nipomo and Los Berros” published by Arcadia in 2011. You’re probably aware that Doug was the Programs Director at the DANA organization in 2011; he is now the Executive Director of the Hearst Castle foundation. His figure of 2,500 was only in reference to the labor camp that Dorothea Lange had visited on the Mesa. There were, according to sources I’ve seen from journalists and other historians, more than one labor camp on the Mesa during the Great Depression.
As to your suggestion that I “put is (sic) unsolicited advice and money into (the Dana Adobe)…that already existing historical landmark and museum.” I already have: Four years ago, I wrote a walking tour of their entire property for the History Center of SLO County; let me know and I will send a copy to you (it’s out of print). Both Dan Krieger and I have contributed to DANA, a fine organization. I intend to do more writing about Nipomo as I learn more. So, you can be sure that I will continue to love, to care about, and to write about the history of Nipomo. I will do my best to anchor my own commentary about that community on “reality,” to the extent that I understand it.
Part of that reality is that today, too few people know about the unique position that Nipomo holds in our nation’s history, particularly the Great Depression and its aftermath. We can see in Nipomo both the tragedy and the triumph of that troubled era, a historical record that speaks to social injustice, to labor activism, and to the way that art, photography, and education can help improve all of our lives.
May I also suggest that you, a business owner who lives in Nipomo, should be among the people who would be happy to have the attention – and the economic impact – that would flow from having a Museum of the Great Depression there on Tefft Street. Your comment on my column suggests to me that you are not likely to join such an effort – that’s OK, but in my humble opinion, you are turning away from a possibility that deserves serious consideration. And that’s too bad.
But you might at least take me up on my offer to buy you a drink at the Nipomo Men’s Club someday. I look forward to hearing from you!
The California State Guard (our state’s official militia) has a unit at Camp SLO, it is the Military Museum Command. They might be a good resource about local military history. That way you could settle your differences, if not, just dual with sabers.
https://calguard.ca.gov/
Why are the well heeled and insulated gloating about the latest jobs report while we, the underclass, are suffering it’s consequences? Is it because the jobs report is seen as a reflection of their arch enemy, Donald J. Trump?
Who the hell is Shawn? And why is his comment marked at 6:59 pm when it’s only 3:29 right now. Is he writing from the Atlantic Ocean?
Technology, gotta love it.
The above comments have nothing to do with my column. New Times has apparently overhauled its website and all earlier comments were deleted. I will attempt to post those comments here in a few minutes.
Friends of The DANA Adobe are having a lovely plaque made of the Migrant Mother. Location of where it will be located is still undetermined. Donations for the plaque are welcome. There was also a very informative talk on Dorothea Lange on the DANA’S summer talk series Maybe you should check out the DANA’S website more often.
Mr. Ashbaugh, I want to thank you for the fine article in the 9/4-11 issue of New Times, regarding Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother photograph. For most of my life, that has been my favorite example of photography as art. I had zero knowledge that it was taken in SLO County! Needless to say, I’m very proud. Also, I agree, we should create a Great Depression museum in our fair county. How do we get started on such a project?