Tulare

Tulare, a town in California's San Joaquin Valley, appears in The Grapes of Wrath as a key node in the migrant labor geography of the 1930s. It is a place where the promise of work—first in cotton, later in fruit—draws the dispossessed, and where the Joad family experiences both the fragile prosperity of steady wages and the systemic exploitation that defines California's industrial agriculture. The town functions as a waypoint on Highway 66, the "mother road" of flight, and as a site where the novel's themes of hunger, labor, and collective action converge.

Geography and the Migrant Road

Tulare lies on the great western highway, 66, which runs from the Mississippi to Bakersfield, across the desert and into the rich California valleys. The road itself is the path of a people in flight—refugees from dust, tractors, and shrinking ownership—and Tulare is one of the towns along this route where migrants hope to find work. The novel's intercalary chapters describe the stream of people moving west, and Tulare is part of that landscape: a place where the concrete road shines like a mirror under the sun, and where the heat makes it seem that there are pools of water in the road. It is a destination for those who have crossed the desert and entered the San Joaquin Valley, a region of orchards and vineyards that represents both the promise and the betrayal of California.

Cotton Picking and the Joads' Work

The Joad family first hears of Tulare as a potential source of work when Uncle John reports that a feller says cotton is coming in up north, near a place called Tulare. This leads to the family's decision to leave the Weedpatch government camp, where they have enjoyed hot water and toilets but no steady employment. They drive north, and on a Saturday they go into Tulare to buy supplies: a tin stove, new overalls for Al, Pa, Winfield, and Uncle John, a dress for Ma, and Ma's best dress given to Rose of Sharon. This shopping trip marks a moment of relative prosperity, as the family has been picking cotton and earning money. The town serves as a place where the Joads can briefly participate in consumer life, buying necessities and even small luxuries like Cracker Jack for the children.

The Labor System and the Handbill

Tulare is also associated with the deceptive labor recruitment that drives the migrant economy. Earlier in the novel, a contractor appears at the Hooverville camp, claiming to need men for fruit picking in Tulare County. He offers thirty cents an hour, but Floyd Knowles challenges him, demanding to see his license and a written contract. The contractor brings a deputy sheriff, and the confrontation leads to violence: Floyd escapes, Jim Casy kicks the deputy, and Casy is arrested. This episode reveals how the promise of work in places like Tulare is used to lure desperate men, only to lower wages and break strikes. The handbills that circulate—orange-colored, promising good wages—are a tool of the growers' associations, designed to create a surplus of labor that drives down pay.

Narrative Significance

Tulare represents the ambiguous promise of California for the migrant families. It is a place where work exists, but at wages that barely sustain life. The Joads' trip to Tulare to buy supplies comes after a period of successful cotton picking, yet the family's relief is temporary. The town is a stop on a journey that never ends, a place where the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy for the vintage. In the novel's structure, Tulare is one of many locations that illustrate the systemic failure of the agricultural economy: the fertile earth produces abundance, but the people who work it cannot eat. The town's appearance in the narrative underscores the tension between the migrants' hope for a better life and the reality of exploitation that awaits them.