# The Golden Fortress: California's Border War on Dust Bowl Refugees - Hardcover

by **Bill Lascher** (Author)

**In February 1936, Los Angeles police officers drove hundreds of miles to California's state borders with one mission: turn back anyone deemed too poor to enter.**

Myths of the Golden State's abundance enticed thousands of Americans uprooted by the Depression, but those who created those myths saw only invading criminal "hordes" that they believed just one man could stop: James "Two-Gun" Davis, Los Angeles's authoritarian police chief.

_The Golden Fortress_ tells the story of Davis's audacious deployment of hand-picked armed police slamming California's door on America's Dust Bowl refugees and Depression-displaced migrants. It depicts the sometimes deadly consequences of law enforcement politicized and weaponized against the poor, even in remote places like Modoc County, where a sheriff's opposition to the blockade inflamed an already smoldering feud between an itinerant newsman and a publisher obsessed with her California heritage.

Davis, blessed by his city's ruling business class and fueled by his own wild claims of communist conspiracies undermining America, deployed his "Foreign Legion" to California's state lines, threatening democracy even as the nation's cities and rural communities juggled the burdens of economic recovery, migrant aid, and public safety.

****_The Golden Fortress_ underscores the decades-long fight over who can access the American Dream.****

### Author Biography

**Bill Lascher** is the author of _Eve of a Hundred Midnights_, a 2017 Oregon Book Awards finalist. Lascher wrote the _American History Tellers_ podcast's Great Depression series. His journalism appears in outlets like _Atlas Obscura_, _Fortune,_ the _Guardian_, the _Portland Monthly_, and _Boom: A Journal of California._ He previously edited the _Ventura County Reporter_ and was a staff writer at the _Pacific Coast Business Times_. A graduate of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, Lascher has a history degree from Oberlin and a master's degree in specialized journalism from the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication.

**Number of Pages:** 304

**Dimensions:** 0.8 x 9.1 x 6.1 IN

**Illustrated:** Yes

**Publication Date:** August 09, 2022

## Details

- **Price:** 27.99 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 27.99 USD | In stock |

## Images

- The Golden Fortress: California's Border War on Dust Bowl Refugees - Hardcover

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