Hooverville

Seattle, February 7, 1933. A city photographer looked across the Hooverville on the tideflats by the port, a field of shacks with downtown's office towers on the skyline. It began in October 1931, when about 20 unemployed men built shacks on the empty land, and it survived two attempts by the authorities to burn it out. A survey in March 1934 counted 639 residents in 479 shacks. The camp was finally cleared in 1941 for port improvements, so this is the shack town that outlasted the whole decade.