Pie Town, New Mexico, is one of the most iconic towns among those that were photographed as part of the Farm Security Administration’s (FSA) project to document the effect of the Great Depression on rural communities in the 1930s and 40s. When FSA photographer Russell Lee stopped at Pie Town to get something to eat, he was struck by the town and its mere 250 families, many of whom had fled dried-up farmland in their native Texas, Oklahoma or Kansas for the fertile corn and pinto bean fields, the communal bonds and the grit that was necessary to make a home out of such rough, unsettled conditions.
Decades later, documentary photographer Arthur Drooker became fascinated himself by the photos, some 600 of which are now in the Library of Congress. Drooker went back to Pie Town, New Mexico—which, only a couple decades after Lee visited, went bust in the same way the settlers’ fled farm towns had, its population peaking around the time of the FSA project—to document what had happened to the town that had so captivated Russell Lee years earlier. He found that same pioneer spirit and a town that stands testament to the all-American cycle of boom-and-bust—and most of all, the strong communities that are born from it.
Above, a Russell Lee photo of Main Street next to a rack of pies cooling in Pie Town today.
(All photos are from Pie Town, Revisited, published by University of New Mexico Press, out November 1.)