The correct answer is E) found themselves mired in poverty, squalor, and lack of economic opportunity in the San Joaquin Valley.
The fate of most of the Okies and other Dust Bowl migrants who headed west to California was that they found themselves mired in poverty, squalor, and lack of economic opportunity in the San Joaquin Valley.
Those were difficult years for the Okies and other Americans that tried to start a new life in the Plains until the Dust Bowl presented a series of serious problems.
What happened in the Great Plains when severe drought followed the removal of native grasses was "Strong winds blew away topsoil and created a Dust Bowl."
In the 1930s, the Great Plains lived difficult moments when severe dust storms hit this region of the United States. The dryness due to lack of water, the removal of native grasses, combined with climate conditions, produced these dust storms that killed animals and ruined the crops. There was no way to keep on farming the land and people had to move to the Pacific West, to California, where they had to start a new life.