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I guess I’m curious if people view the Sun Belt merely as a post war phenomenon. Because LA grew up during the 20s housing boom (as did Detroit), and was already the 3rd largest metro by the time the war ended. So it is fairly unique for a Sun Belt city on that count. Maybe “original” is fitting even though I think other cities are better examples.
To me, the term 'Sunbelt' is inextricably tied to the hopes and aspirations of post-WW II Americans. GIs that were exposed to the southern tier of the country while stationed there saw a different way of life than what they and their families were used to...warmer climate, slower pace, more 'breathing room', so to speak. After the war, they made the decision to return. As a young girl coming of age in suburban Atlanta in the 60s and 70's, my schools were chock full of these veterans' children; they were, in fact, the rule and not the exception...as a native, I was the 'Odd Man Out', really.
That being said, I would also say that yes, Los Angeles was the epitome of this phenomenon, as it was happening earlier and on a greater scale than in any other Sunbelt city at that time.
I tend to agree with the OP's suggestion based partially on my family history. My great grandparents moved with their family (including my grandfather) from Sterling, Nebraska to Tustin, CA (about 35 miles south of downtown LA) in about 1893. Tustin is in Orange County, and my great grandfather bought a small orange grove in what is now downtown Tustin, which at the time had a few hundred residents (today population over 50K).
My grandmother's family moved from New Hampshire to Long Beach around 1900. Long Beach became known as Iowa-by-the-Sea based on all the newcomers from Iowa although there were plenty from other parts of the upper Midwest and Northeast. There was an annual "Iowa Picnic" in the 20th century years, not sure if it's still going on.
My paternal grandmother, who was a young widow, moved with her mother, my father and my aunt from Chicago to LA in 1917. My grandmother had a brother who had moved a few years earlier from Chicago to LA, so they had someone there to help them get settled in.
My paternal grandfather with my great GF immigrated from Norway in the mid-1800s to Wisconsin, then Minnesota and finally to homestead a farm in South Dakota.
When my GF was in his 50s in 1920 he planned to leave the SD farm and move to Los Angeles because of respiratory illnesses. He already had lots of friends and relatives that had left the Midwest for Los Angeles but he died before he was able to.
My father and his siblings ended up growing up on a farm in South Dakota but when WWII broke out and after the war all the boys settled in Southern California (Long Beach and LA) except for one in Seattle Washington (the Boeing Company).
It’s perhaps just me, but I don’t associate the term Sun Belt with the Midwestern farmers moving to California. Tom Joad feels like a different story altogether to me even if similarities exist. Not sure I even think of the soldiers coming home, though again similarities.
In my head, I usually view the term Sun Belt as a counterpoint to the deindustrializing of the US in the 60s and 70s (and beyond). It’s the Yang to the Rust Belt’s Ying. Case in point, while many of the soon-to-be Sun Belt darlings (Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, etc) were exploding in the 1950s, there was still lots of growth in the industrial Midwest/NE. In the 60s, there was a noticeable shift. The growth in the Sun Belt cities was reaching 2-,3-,5- times the growth in the industrial metros, and spreading to smaller cities like Charlotte, the Triangle, Austin. American demographics continued along that path ever since.
It’s perhaps just me, but I don’t associate the term Sun Belt with the Midwestern farmers moving to California. Tom Joad feels like a different story altogether to me even if similarities exist. Not sure I even think of the soldiers coming home, though again similarities.
In my head, I usually view the term Sun Belt as a counterpoint to the deindustrializing of the US in the 60s and 70s (and beyond). It’s the Yang to the Rust Belt’s Ying. Case in point, while many of the soon-to-be Sun Belt darlings (Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, etc) were exploding in the 1950s, there was still lots of growth in the industrial Midwest/NE. In the 60s, there was a noticeable shift. The growth in the Sun Belt cities was reaching 2-,3-,5- times the growth in the industrial metros, and spreading to smaller cities like Charlotte, the Triangle, Austin. American demographics continued along that path ever since.
And right along those lines, the 60's was the last decade of the Great Migration with the "Reverse Migration" taking off officially in 1970.
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