In October and November of 1939, Dorothea Lange traveled to Gem County, Idaho, to photograph a community that had benefited directly from support provided by the Farm Security Administration. The Depression had hit Idaho farmers hard, and their plight was worsened by a lengthy drought. A group of 36 farmers from Gem County formed a cooperative to submit an application to the FSA for a $1,500 loan to build a saw mill. Once completed, the mill allowed the farmers to take advantage of the vast stands of yellow pine and Douglas fir trees of the region, and brought financial stability to a community that had previously been on the brink of poverty. As such, Ola Self-Help Saw Mill Cooperative was exactly the sort of success story the FSA wanted to document, and Lange’s photographs provide an eloquent account of its impact upon the community.
