Klamath, Calif. – Nearly a half century ago, Ron Sundberg’s father paddled across the Klamath River in a rowboat with his brothers to get to school on the Yurok Indian Reservation.

Merced, Calif. –Dignity Health, The California Endowment, Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC) and Le Grand and Planada school districts gathered on March 9 to celebrate the newly unveiled water bottle filling stations that have been installed in elementary, middle and high schools.

Whitehall, Mont. – In the late 1970s, Barbara Miller was a newspaper reporter writing about Missoula and Butte, Montana, and as such, she paid attention to all sorts of trends-from the local and national economy, to housing, to scientific breakthroughs. As it turned out, her reporting and stories eventually intersected when she came across some technological research that would have a significant real-world impact in Butte.

Moab, Utah –Emily Niehaus happily acknowledges she took a circuitous route to become a housing advocate. She tallies her master’s degree in applied sociology and following that, stints as a loan officer, bookkeeper and case worker.

In this issue: A Photographic Chronicle of America’s Working Poor—Smithsonian journeyed from Maine to California to update a landmark study of American life – Just north of Sacramento is a tiny settlement that residents call La Tijera, The Scissors, because two roads come together there at a sharp angle.