Liberty Ships, Closed Doors · Episode 10 of 13 · 30 min
Boomtowns: Life and Death in America's Disposable Cities
The millions of war workers lived in boomtowns, instant cities raised beside shipyards and aircraft plants with federal money. Strangers shared beds in shifts, water and schools buckled, and the places were overcrowded, hastily built, segregated and treated as disposable. Vanport, Oregon, home to forty thousand, was swept away by a flood in an afternoon in 1948, while Marin City survived.
Where it happens
- Vanport, Oregon+1 more episodeLargest wartime housing project, destroyed by flood in 1948
- Willow Run, Michigan+1 more episodeHousing chaos around Ford's B-24 bomber plant
- Richmond, California+1 more episodeTown swelled by Kaiser's shipyards
- Marin City, California+3 more episodesFederal town beside Marinship that survived
Timeline
- 1942Federal war-housing programs build worker towns such as Vanport and Marin City
- 1942-1945Shipyard and aircraft cities double and triple in months
- 1943Overcrowding and segregation feed the year's racial violence
- 1945War ends; many boomtowns empty
- May 30, 1948Columbia River flood destroys Vanport, displacing about 18,500
Still debated
Vanport figures are standard estimates, and the flood was a real disaster compounded by officials' assurances that the dikes were safe. Not every boomtown vanished, and segregation varied by site.