1930s and the 1950s, to Thesis

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Their California dream is filled with the daily reality of survival, while by the 1950s, recreation and the ocean helped urge many people to leave their inland homes and travel west. That meant they needed water to survive. Reisner writes, "By the 1950s, California was already using its full 4.4 million acre-foot entitlement to the Colorado River" (Reisner 134). Water, the ocean, and the population of California are all linked in the California dream.

Finally, water in California means survival, but it also is big business. The Joads saw the power and greed of big business when they arrived in the state. Their dream was that everything would be perfect, that they could get a fresh start, but that was not the case. Steinbeck writes, "And in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden oranges on the dark green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low" (Steinbeck 234). Reisner notes the same greed in his book. He writes, "The growers, by then, had such a stranglehold on the legislature that they convinced it, in the depths of the Depression, to authorize a huge water project -- by far the largest in the world -- to rescue them from their own greed" (Reisner 9).
It was this water project that made it possible for the families of the 1950s to relocate and find their own California dream. Their dream depended on water, just like the Joads dream depended on it, but by the 1950s, people were coming to California because it represented a new, diverse and enjoyable lifestyle, while in the 1930s people came just to survive.

Water linked these two time periods together and helped form the California dream for many people. The link between these two periods is growth, and the continuing need for more fresh water as people moved to California to find the California dream......

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