“We were tramps along with the rest of them”: The Journal of Earl Neller, Who Hitchhiked across South Dakota with Six Children in 1933

At the height of the Great Depression in the summer of 1933, Earl Neller and six children tramped, hitchhiked, and railroaded some 850 miles across the Dakotas over twenty-seven days. Neller, a high school teacher from St. Louis, Missouri, and the children, ages eight to thirteen, hiked west from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, journeyed through the Black Hills, then headed north until they reached their destination in Hebron, North Dakota.