It was a cold, desperate spring in 1935. If you walked down any main street in America, you didn't just see empty pockets; you saw empty eyes. The Great Depression wasn't just a "bad economy" anymore. It was a national emergency that was actively tearing the social fabric apart. People weren't just hungry; they were losing the very idea of what it meant to work.
So, when was the WPA created exactly? It wasn't some slow, bureaucratic rollout. It happened with a stroke of a pen on May 6, 1935. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 7034, and just like that, the Works Progress Administration was born. But to understand why that date matters, you have to look at the chaos happening in the weeks leading up to it. Congress had already passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act in April, basically handing FDR a blank check for nearly $5 billion. That was an insane amount of money back then—roughly 6.7% of the entire GDP. Imagine the government today dropping trillions into a single jobs program overnight. That’s the scale we’re talking about.
The Day Everything Changed: May 6, 1935
Most people think the WPA was just another government office. It wasn't. It was a radical experiment. Before May 6, the government mostly gave out "the dole"—direct cash payments. FDR hated that. He thought it sucked the dignity out of people. He wanted work.
Harry Hopkins, a fast-talking, chain-smoking social worker from Iowa, was the guy FDR tapped to run the show. Hopkins famously said, "Give a man a hole to dig and tell him to fill it up. Give him anything, just give him a job." When the WPA was created, the goal was simple: get 3.5 million people off relief rolls and onto a payroll.
The logistics were a nightmare. You can’t just "start" a national employer from scratch. Yet, by the end of 1935, they had hundreds of thousands of people building bridges, sewing clothes, and painting murals. It was messy. It was loud. And honestly, it was pretty controversial.
Why the Timing of the WPA Creation Matters
Why 1935? Why not 1933 when FDR first took office?
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Basically, the first wave of the New Deal—the stuff like the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) and the PWA (Public Works Administration)—wasn't moving fast enough. The PWA was focused on massive, slow-moving projects like dams and huge bridges. They required months of engineering and planning. People were starving now.
The WPA was designed to be the "light" version. Small projects. Local impact. Projects that could start in two weeks, not two years. If a town needed a new sidewalk or a small post office, the WPA was there. By the time the agency was created in May, the political pressure on FDR was boiling over. Critics like Huey Long were screaming that the New Deal wasn't doing enough for the "forgotten man." The WPA was the counter-punch.
It Wasn't Just About Construction
When we talk about the creation of the WPA, we usually think of guys in overalls with shovels. And yeah, they built a lot. We’re talking 650,000 miles of roads and 78,000 bridges. But there was a weird, beautiful side to it too.
Federal Project Number One. That was the official name for the arts branch.
- The Federal Writers’ Project: They hired out-of-work writers to interview former slaves. Those "Slave Narratives" are now some of the most important historical documents in the Library of Congress.
- The Federal Art Project: This is how we got those iconic, colorful WPA posters and those massive murals in post offices across the country.
- The Federal Theatre Project: They put on plays for people who had never seen a stage in their lives.
It’s kind of wild to think about. In the middle of the worst economic collapse in history, the government decided that a painter’s work was just as valuable as a bricklayer’s. Not everyone agreed, obviously. Plenty of people thought it was a massive waste of taxpayer money—what they called "boondoggling."
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The "Boondoggling" Backlash
Almost the second the WPA was created, the attacks started. The word "boondoggle" actually became famous during this era. Critics claimed that WPA workers were just leaning on shovels all day. They said FDR was just "buying" votes for the 1936 election with government jobs.
The tension was real. In some cities, the WPA paid better than local private businesses, which made factory owners furious. In other places, the wages were kept purposefully low so workers would jump back to the private sector the second a "real" job opened up. It was a delicate, often broken, balance.
And let's be real about the limitations. The WPA wasn't perfect. It was often discriminatory. While it did hire African Americans and women, they were often relegated to the lowest-paying jobs or faced segregated work crews. In the South, local officials often blocked Black workers from getting WPA jobs entirely during harvest seasons to keep them working in the fields for pennies. The "creation" of the WPA didn't automatically mean equality.
The End of the Line: From 1935 to 1943
The WPA didn't last forever. It wasn't meant to.
By 1939, the name was actually changed to the Works Projects Administration. Then, the world started to catch fire. As World War II kicked off in Europe, the American economy began to shift. Factories started humming again. The "unemployed" were suddenly needed in tank plants and shipyards.
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In December 1942, FDR sent a letter to Congress saying the WPA had earned an "honorable discharge." By June 1943, it was officially shut down. The era that started on that May day in 1935 was over.
What We Can Learn From the WPA Today
Looking back at when the WPA was created gives us a lot of perspective on how we handle crises now. Whether it was the 2008 crash or the 2020 pandemic, the "WPA model" is always the ghost in the room. People always ask: why don't we just do that again?
The truth is, the WPA worked because the world was different. There were fewer regulations, lower land costs, and a massive surplus of manual labor. Today, building a bridge involves ten years of environmental impact studies. In 1935, they just started digging.
But the core idea—that work provides more than just a paycheck—is still incredibly relevant. The WPA proved that the government could be the "employer of last resort." It showed that infrastructure isn't just "spending," it's an investment that lasts 100 years. If you've ever walked through a state park or sent a letter at an old stone post office, you’ve touched the legacy of May 6, 1935.
Actionable Insights for History Buffs and Researchers
If you're looking to dive deeper into the WPA legacy in your own backyard, here is how you actually find the "real" history:
- Check the Cornerstones: Most WPA buildings have a brass plaque or a stone carving that says "WPA 1938" or something similar. Look at your local high school stadium or town hall.
- The Living New Deal: There is an incredible project called The Living New Deal (run out of UC Berkeley). It’s a crowdsourced map of every WPA project in the country. You can plug in your zip code and see exactly what was built near you.
- National Archives (Record Group 69): If you’re a genealogy nerd, this is the gold mine. The records of the WPA are massive. You can sometimes find the actual employment cards of ancestors who worked on these crews.
- Local Library Murals: Many WPA murals were painted over in the 50s and 60s because they were seen as "too radical." Some are being restored today. Check with your local historical society to see if your town has a "hidden" mural behind a layer of drywall.
The WPA wasn't just a date on a calendar. It was a massive, clunky, inspired, and deeply human attempt to keep a country from falling apart. When it was created in 1935, it changed the relationship between the American citizen and the American government forever.