Though Rush's family left after the Dust Bowl years were officially over, they took the same path — traveling Route 66, which the migrants called "the Mother Road," until they reached California.

Pat Rush and her family left Arkansas in the wake of one of the largest migrations in U.S. history, in the hope of making a better life for themselves out west.

Migrant stories have two parts: the leaving of an old life, and the building of a new one. Pat Rush's "old life" started in Arkansas. She was born in 1935 and her family worked as laborers picking ...