President Herbert Hoover and first lady Lou Hoover hosted the traditional New Year’s Reception at the White House on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 1930. Covered extensively in the press, the event was a “who’s who” of Washington executives, diplomats and other insiders showing off the latest fashion while thousands of ordinary citizens stood in line for a handshake with the president.

The dignified reception followed less-dignified New Year’s Eve celebrations that featured the typical rituals and hijinks despite Prohibition.

The Indianapolis Times reported New Year’s Day that “Churches are Filled” but so were “Night Clubs, Streets, and Theaters” the night before. The Washington Evening Star reported “Thirty Revelers Spend New Year’s at Police Stations” and “Liquor Raids Net Five Arrests Here.” As a result of two car crashes, the paper reported, several individuals had been injured, including one man who shockingly had a “pocket torn from [his] coat.”

The Star itself celebrated the new year by treating its approximately 550 “carrier boys” to the Metropolitan Theater to see a screening of “The Show of Shows.” The 1929 ensemble musical review — a talkie! — featured stars like John Barrymore, Myrna Loy and canine celebrity Rin Tin Tin. The hard-working boys worked six days a week delivering the newspaper to Washington, D.C., readers.

The economic straits that would face the nation and the world in the 1930s were not fully known when revelers welcomed the new decade. In fact, one newspaper called 1929 “A Good Year” in its New Year’s Day edition. Surely, readers hoped, it would be a quick recovery.

But all too soon the nation would learn what lay ahead. Accelerating economic pressures forced the closure of factories and farms, leaving many in unemployment and bankruptcy.

The failure of thousands of banks obliterated many Americans' life savings, prompting increases in crime, malnutrition and homelessness.

When the unemployment crisis peaked in 1933, a full quarter of all American workers and nearly half of African American workers were unemployed, according to the Library of Congress. Meanwhile, the number of women entering the workforce rose 24% in an effort to supplement household income.

As foreclosures forced families from their homes and farms, many took refuge with relatives or in public shelters. Others found temporary shelter in their cars or in makeshift shanty towns that came to be known as “Hoovervilles,” in contemptuous honor of the 31st president.

President Hoover, a former mining engineer and later U.S. Secretary of Commerce, failed to stem the perilous economic downturn with limited public works projects and tariffs.

His opponent in the 1932 presidential election, New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt, promised without detail a “new deal” for the American people at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

What his plan lacked in specifics he made up in enthusiasm and a rousing campaign song, “Happy Days are Here Again.” Roosevelt won in a landslide, with an Electoral College vote of 472 to 59.

At his March 4, 1933, inauguration, the new president promised “action and action now,” telling the nation that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

The 51-year-old president pledged to broaden executive power, establishing a new direction for recovery and redefining the federal government's role.

Just eight days later, Roosevelt addressed the nation via radio from the White House in the first of 30 radio addresses that would come to be known as “fireside chats.” The 13-minute talk urged patience during a four-day bank holiday designed to stem the immediate financial crisis.

His strategy marked the beginning of a new era in government communication that took the message directly to the people. They would elect him again in 1936, 1940 and 1944.

Despite the festive campaign song and radio chats, it would be years before happy days would arrive again for many Americans.

Roosevelt hit the ground running, however. A startling array of legislation and executive actions -- 99 executive orders in his first 100 days -- was designed to provide relief, kick-start the economy and build protections against future crises.

Among those orders was the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in April 1933. The work relief program provided employment to 2.5 million people, mostly young men, who built roads, bridges, trails, dams and national park facilities across all 48 states.

More than 8 million people found work through the Works Progress Administration (WPA) beginning in 1935. The agency completed infrastructure projects, constructed civic buildings like libraries and airports, developed historical and cultural projects, and more.

Other New Deal actions established innovative economic policies and enduring protections for American workers.

Beginning in 1933, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) protected depositors’ bank accounts. Launched in 1934, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulated the stock market. Starting in 1935, Social Security protected Americans against the dangers of economic instability. And beginning in 1938, most American workers would earn a minimum wage of $0.25, approximately $5.80 in 2025.

Eleanor Roosevelt did not look forward to assuming the traditionally ceremonial role of first lady. But she quickly transformed the position into one of advocacy and power during the Depression and beyond.

While her husband was working in Washington and limited by the effects of polio, which restricted his mobility, Roosevelt traveled across the U.S. to visit schools, hospitals, prisons, coal mines and impoverished communities, reporting back to the president with her recommendations.

Eleanor Roosevelt was vocal about policies that would improve the plight of the economically disenfranchised, support labor movements and open new opportunities for women, African Americans and other marginalized groups. She also espoused ambitious projects like the ill-fated community for unemployed miners and farmers at Arthurdale, W.Va.

Like the president, Eleanor Roosevelt used the media to reach the public. In addition to weekly radio broadcasts and frequent press conferences, Roosevelt provided advice to women in a 1933 book, “It’s Up to the Women,” and wrote a newspaper column titled “My Day” for more than 25 years.

Roosevelt’s impact was not only appreciated in retrospect. As just one example, the editorial board of the Washington Times, in a Jan. 19, 1937, column, praised “the purely voluntary services which Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt is rendering the country” as “an example which might well animate all citizens of the country, particularly those occupying seats in Congress.”

An environmental disaster in the Southern plains and heartland intensified the bleak economic conditions of the 1930s.

In a desperate attempt to boost income, financially strapped farmers dug up more precious prairie grasslands in the early 1930s. But as unprecedented drought conditions took hold, massive windstorms stripped topsoil from millions of acres in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and elsewhere.

Some urban residents donned facemasks as unimaginably large dust clouds up to 10,000 feet in height traveled across hundreds or thousands of miles, as far as the eastern seaboard and the Atlantic Ocean.

Due to foreclosure, desperation or both, about 2.5 million individuals sought opportunities elsewhere, especially in southern California. Many encountered dire conditions as they traveled west in dilapidated vehicles, often camping by the roadside, only to find employment scarce and wages low on the West Coast.

The Farm Security Administration, created in 1937, helped by providing financial assistance, relocation benefits and subsistence homesteads, but many displaced migrants faced continued poverty and discrimination for years. John Steinbeck famously captured the desperation in his 1939 novel, “The Grapes of Wrath.”

While many travelers of the 1930s endured significant hardships, the decade would also bring the golden age of America’s beloved highway, U.S. Route 66.

The first highway to be completely paved, in 1938, the “Mother Road” runs from Chicago to the Pacific, where a sign on the Santa Monica Pier today alerts travelers that they have reached the “End of the Trail.”

Lively towns like Tucumcari, N.M., and Flagstaff, Ariz., readily welcomed travelers with neon-lighted gas stations, quirky restaurants and cozy motels—many of which still welcome travelers today.

Americans of the 1930s found a welcome distraction in arts, music and entertainment with a distinctive feel.

Jazz and swing ensembles dominated the era with the “King of Swing” Benny Goodman and his orchestra, and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” bandleader Duke Ellington.

A young Bing Crosby topped the charts with his Depression-themed 1932 hit “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and the wishful-thinking of 1936’s “Pennies from Heaven.”

Crosby wasn’t so young when compared to the decade’s top silver screen star, Shirley Temple, who won an Academy Juvenile Award in 1935 at the age of 6. The top box-office draw from 1934 through 1938, according to IMDb, Temple’s films included musical standards such as “On the Good Ship Lollipop” (1934) and “Animal Crackers in My Soup” (1935).

The decade would end with two monumental film achievements: “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) starring Judy Garland, and “Gone with the Wind” (1939) starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh—still the highest-grossing movie of all time.

Sports provided another much-needed escape for many Americans in the 1930s.

In golf, the decade saw the first Masters Tournament in Augusta, Ga., in 1934. Champion Horton Smith took home a windfall purse of $1,500.

Detroit, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles all welcomed future NFL teams. In Philadelphia, the team was named not after a bird of prey but after the blue eagle logo of Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration (NRA).

On the track and in the boxing ring, sports also came to embody the era’s mounting geo-political and ideological global conflicts.

In the heart of Nazi Germany, African American sprinter and long-jumper Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The high school and Ohio State University standout was celebrated in the American press as an Olympic hero but returned to his homeland to find hardship and discrimination.

In 1938, American heavyweight boxer Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber,” avenged his 1936 loss to German Max Schmeling with a first-round knockout. Schmeling would go on to fight in the German Air Force during World War II while Louis joined the U.S. Army.

While middle America watched its topsoil blown away, urban residents of the 1930s watched their cities blossom skyward.

A symbol of progress and determination, the Empire State Building was built by about 3,400 construction workers in a dizzying 14 months, opening May 1, 1931. The 102-story building, however, was soon dubbed the “Empty State Building” due to its mere 20% occupancy rate in the early years of the Depression.

Less than a mile away, the 77-story Art Deco Chrysler Building also opened in 1931. A long-awaited hydroelectric project, the Hoover Dam opened in 1935. And the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time, the Golden Gate Bridge, opened in 1937.

This period of physical growth in America came at a human as well as a financial cost, with 11 workers killed in the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and nearly 100 in the construction of Hoover Dam. But remarkably, only five workers died during the construction of the Empire State Building, and none in the construction of the Chrysler Building.

Even with dust and depression, Americans still found time for optimism in the 1930s.

After 13 years, Prohibition came to an end on Dec. 5, 1933, thanks to the 21st Amendment.

Nearly 50 million visitors celebrated “A Century of Progress” at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. Six years later, more than 45 million discovered “The World of Tomorrow” at the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Queens, N.Y.

But despite these moments of celebration, lingering economic woes would persist until the demands of a new world war finally pulled the nation from its difficulties.

Katrina Jesick Quinn is a faculty member at Slippery Rock University. She is an editor of “From the Arctic to the Orient: Adventure Journalism in the Gilded Age” (McFarland) and “The Civil War Soldier and the Press” (Routledge).