These 50 amazing color photos were taken by photographers who working for the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI), capture everyday life in the United States from the Great Depression and World War II.

Shulman’s market, on N at Union Street S.W., Washington, D.C.

Laundry, barbershop and stores, Washington, D.C.

The main shopping street, Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands

Street in a town Frederiksted, St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands

One of the steep streets on the hillsides, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands

House, Houston, Texas

Sylvia Sweets Tea Room, corner of School and Main streets, Brockton, Massachusetts

People at the Fair, Pie Town, New Mexico

Boys playing marbles, FSA labor camp, Robstown, Texas

Boy building a model airplane as girl watches, FSA camp, Robstown, Texas.

Grand Grocery Co.], Lincoln, Nebraska

Street corner, Dillon, Mont. Dillon is the trading center for a prosperous cattle and sheep country

View along US 40 in Mount Vernon Canyon, Colorado

Old lead mines here have been reopened, Creede, Colo. Creede for many years was “a ghost town,” but has resumed the activities that made it an important lead producing center years ago, and is now producing much vitally needed metal for the war effort

Children in the tenement district, Brockton, Massachusetts

Steel and concrete go into place rapidly as a new steel mill takes form, Columbia Steel Co., Geneva, Utah

Workers leaving Pennsylvania shipyards, Beaumont, Texas

Japanese-American camp, war emergency evacuation, Tule Lake Relocation Center, Newell, California

General store, Chacon, New Mexico

Plaza of Trampas, Taos Co., New Mexico

Village of La Alama, near Questa, Taos Co., New Mexico

 

Rockefeller Plaza, exhibit for United Nations by OWI, New York, N.Y

.

Woman putting on her lipstick in a park with Union Station behind her, Washington, D.C.

A noontime rest for a full-fledged assembly worker at the Long Beach, Calif., plant of Douglas Aircraft Company. Nacelle parts for a heavy bomber form the background.

Civil Air Patrol Base, Bar Harbor, Maine

General store, near Questa, Taos County, New Mexico

arm owned by James Pompey, who 20 years ago came from Italy on the advice of a brother, Southington, Connecticut. People of Finnish, Slav, German, and Polish extraction help him to farm it.

Children stage a patriotic demonstration, Southington, Connecticut

The water stretching machine of an eastern parachute manufacturer stretches shroud lines so as to make them more adaptable to the finished product, Manchester, Connecticut

The utmost precision is required of these operators who are cutting and drilling parachute packs in an eastern factory, Manchester, Conn. Their work is under constant close supervision.

Sailor and girl at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Washington, D.C.

Tank crew standing in front of M-4 tank, Ft. Knox, Kentucky

Men working on telephone lines, probably near a TVA dam hydroelectric plant

Mrs. Viola Sievers, one of the wipers at the roundhouse giving a giant “H” class locomotive a bath of live steam, Clinton, Iowa

Women workers employed as wipers in the roundhouse having lunch in their rest room, C. & N.W. R.R., Clinton, Iowa

Formerly an aircraft dock, this huge building — thought to be the largest in the world with no interior supports — is now the scene of many busy shops turning out aircraft sub-assembly parts, Goodyear Aircraft Corp., Akron, Ohio. Either new housing close to the plant or vastly improved public transportation will eventually have to be supplied, for the tires on the cars of the workers, and perhaps even the cars themselves, will in many instances give in before the end of the present emergency.

Freight Depot of the U.S. Army consolidating station, Chicago, Illinois

New River Marine Base, motor detachment, North Carolina

Workers on the Liberator Bombers, Consolidated Aircraft Corp., Fort Worth, Texas

War production workers at the Vilter [Manufacturing] Company making M5 and M7 guns for the U.S. Army, Milwaukee, Wis. Ex-housewife, age 24, filing small parts. Her husband and brother are in the armed service.

Mrs. Eloise J. Ellis has been appointed by civil service to be senior supervisor in the Assembly and Repairs Department at the Naval Air Base, Corpus Christi, Texas. She buoys up feminine morale in her department by arranging suitable living conditions for out-of-state employees and by helping them with their personal problems.

Painting the American insignia on airplane wings is a job that Mrs. Irma Lee McElroy, a former office worker, does with precision and patriotic zeal. Mrs. McElroy is a civil service employee at the Naval Air Base, Corpus Christi, Texas. Her husband is a flight instructor.

Co-op orange packing plant, Redlands, Calif. Workman is doing the preliminary sorting, picking out the discards.

General view of part of the South Water Street freight depot of the Illinois Central Railroad, Chicago, Illinois

Santa Fe R.R. freight train about to leave for the West Coast from Corwith yard, Chicago, Illinois

Grocery store, Mt. Orab, Ohio, Route 74

Country school near Portsmouth, Ohio

Road out of Romney, West Virginia

Seed and feed store, Lincoln, Nebraska

Children playing by road near school house, Kansas(Photos via The Library of Congress)