The Golden Fortress

In February 1936, Los Angeles police officers drove hundreds of miles to Californias state borders with one mission: turn back anyone deemed too poor to enter. Myths of the Golden States 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 Daviss audacious deployment of hand-picked armed police slamming Californias door on Americas 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 sheriffs 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 citys ruling business class and fueled by his own wild claims of communist conspiracies undermining America, deployed his Foreign Legion to Californias 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.