Zacheriah Anderson
The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was considered one of the worst droughts in America in the past century.
The drought was brought on by changing climate in the mid-west; the drought during the Dust
Bowl affected nearly two-thirds of the country along with parts of Mexico and Canada.
Let’s take a look back to the early 1800’s when there were a large amount of settlers moving west looking for new farmland.White Americans moved into the western part of the country and claimed land on what was then traditionally used by Native Americans, also called
Indians. While the Indians fought to keep their land, they lost and the government forced them to move onto reservations. Settlers came from the East by the thousands in search of new
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(www.manythings.org/voa/history.131)
By the early 1900’s farmers were faced with many more problems, the first was overproduction. People in America thought there was so much land that they did not worry about cutting down trees and digging up rich topsoil, then moving on when drought struck their land.With new farming techniques producing greater yields of crops, the amount of land being farmed dramatically increased.This meant that there was a larger amount of crops going to the market, while some might think this is a great thing, it was not, and too much food and not enough consumers caused the prices to fall quickly. For the consumer this seems like a great thing, but this was bad for the farmer, lower prices meant that the farmer had to grow enormous amounts of food to just to recoup the money he had spent and to gain enough profits to make it through the winter. This was bad for the land as many farmer dug up the land, replanted
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With the prices of crops so low, this meant the farmer’s income was low. Many farmers abused the land for generations; this was because they didn’t know any better.
The Dust Bowl as we know from our history books was the name that was given to an area in the west known as the Great Plains that was devastated by drought in the early years of the Great Depression.The Great Plains region covered most of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.It stretched into parts of Missouri, Colorado and New Mexico.So while this land was rich with a thick grassy root system that held it together, after many generations of poor farming practices and thousands of acres of flat grassland being plowed, the soil no longer had the grassy root system. So in 1934 when the drought hit the Great Plains, which lasted 3 year, the winds picked up the once fertile strong topsoil and turned it into what people then called a
“Black Blizzard.” These dust storms caused cattle to choke as they had nowhere to run and no way to get fresh clean air.People fled to their homes for shelter from the dust and some even left the land behind in search of new land.Many farmers were not prepared for nature’s
Farmers in America were upset due to the prices of their products going down, increasing
The Dust Bowl or the “Dirty Thirties” was a series of dust storms caused by farmers moving in and plowing, which made at least six feet of topsoil in some areas. A major drought hit and the topsoil got picked up by wind and this caused a lot of static electricity which killed crops. It also caused sickness like dust pneumonia and made plagues of rabbits and locusts.
The Dust Bowl occurred during The Great Depression in the 1930's. Which was an especially dreadful time for it to happen. Many people were impoverished or were on the brink of poverty. Making the man-made natural disaster all the more devastating.
Drought had caused the soil to become dry and loose by early 1930. This occurs mostly because the area most hurt by the Dust Bowl had once been grassland, in the early 1900s they had been converted into wheat lands because that was more lucrative. “…and the dust storms of the following decade revealed, a self-destructive culture, cutting away the ground from under people’s feet.” (Worster pg 44).
The lack of rainfall led to a drought in 1923 til 1940. Farmers needed at least 20 inches of annual rainfall in order to grow crops in dry regions like the Southern Great Plains (Document E). “ John Wesley Powell, the great Western explorer, determined that 20 inches of
Although the large cattle herds benefited the many, it hurt the smaller livestock farmers because they were unable to keep up with the prices the larger farms had, plus when poor weather such as droughts and flash-floods came through the barbed wire kept the cattle trapped and the smaller more poor farmers lost most of their livestock while the bigger richer farmers would still have some left to keep them in business. This harsh testament of the weathers unpredictability forced many farmers to move to more urban environments where money was more stable when working in a factory and food could be bought at a local market rather than having to grow the food yourself.
They headed west. Some of the farmers that left often said “we’ll be back when the rain comes” or “we’ll be back” (Hesse 3). When the people traveled many of them faced difficulties. Some of the hardships people faced were worry and Dust Pneumonia. People were worried about if they would be better in California or not. In addition, they were worried if they could make it to California or wherever their destination was. Many people caught Dust Pneumonia. Dust Pneumonia is an infection in the lungs caused by the exposure to too much dust. This exposure to dust unfortunately caused many people to die. Some of the symptoms include high fever, pain in chest, difficulty in breathing, and coughing. If not treated, you can die, which sadly happened to many people. (“The Dust Bowl” 1)
Farmers were limited
Though most everyone has heard of the Dust Bowl, many people don’t actually know what it is. “When rain stopped falling in the Midwest, farm fields began to dry up” (The Dust Bowl). Much of the nation’s crops couldn’t grow, causing major economic struggle. "The Homestead Act of 1862, which provided settlers with 160 acres of public land, was followed by the Kinkaid Act of 1904 and the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909” (Dust Bowl). This caused many inexperienced farmers to jump on this easy start of a career. Because of this, farmers in the Midwest had practiced atrocious land management for years. This included over plowing the land and using the same crops year after year. In this way, lots of fertile soil had gotten lost. This helped windstorms gather topsoil from the land, and whip it into huge clouds; dust storms. Hot, dry, and windy, almost the entire middle section of the United States was directly affected. The states affected were South
Eventually, after years of drought and dust storms, the plains people had to accept some form of aid or fall to the lowest
The Dust Bowl was a series of devastating events that occurred in the 1930’s. It affected not only crops, but people, too. Scientists have claimed it to be the worst drought in the United States in 300 years. It all began because of “A combination of a severe water shortage and harsh farming techniques,” said Kimberly Amadeo, an expert in economical analysis. (Amadeo). Because of global warming, less rain occurred, which destroyed crops. The crops, which were the only things holding the soil in place, died, which then caused the wind to carry the soil with it, creating dust storms. (Amadeo). In fact, according to Ken Burns, an American film maker, “Some 850 million tons of topsoil blew away in 1935 alone. "Unless something is done," a government report predicted, "the western plains will be as arid as the Arabian desert." (Burns). According to Cary Nelson, an English professor, fourteen dust storms materialized in 1932, and in 1933, there were 48 dust storms. Dust storms raged on in the Midwest for about a decade, until finally they slowed down, and stopped. Although the dust storms came to a halt, there was still a lot of concern. Thousands of crops were destroyed, and farmers were afraid that the dust storm would happen
The existing problem was the exhaustion of the soil, reduced in the amount of nitrogen and then destruction of crops. There was an open field system, where the lands were divided into several large fields and given to the peasants of a village to cultivate. They used to cultivate same grain crops which led to
land was hit with the worst rains it had seen in years effectively turning the land
conditions. Dust was filling everybody’s lungs including the animals; the animals soon all started dying.
One major cause of that Dust Bowl was severe droughts during the 1930’s. The other cause was capitalism. Over-farming and grazing in order to achieve high profits killed of much of the plain’s grassland and when winds approached, nothing was there to hold the devastated soil on the ground.