Dust Bowl Research Paper

Imagine living on a farm out west during the 1930s. In the middle of a series of terrible dust storms. The dust storms were so horrific, children were dying from “dust pneumonia” which was a result of breathing the dust in. These dust storms would trap plains settlers in their homes for hours, days at a time. This series of dust storms is better known as the Dust Bowl. It forced 3 million settlers out of their homes. Drought, increased mechanization, and destruction of grass all lead to the Dust Bowl.

The Dust Bowl, battering the Midwest for nearly a decade with high winds, bad farming techniques, and drought, became a pivotal point in American history. The wind storm that seemed relentless beginning in the early 1930’s until its spell ended in 1939, affected the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and the broader agriculture industry. The catastrophic effects of the Dust Bowl took place most prominently around the Great Plains, otherwise known as the farming belt, including states such as Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, which were hit extraordinarily hard. Millions of farming acres destroyed by poor farming techniques was a major contributor to what is considered to be one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in American history. This period resulted in almost a decade of unstable farming and economic despair. Thousands of families sought government assistance in order to survive. Luckily, government aid to farmers and new agriculture programs that were introduced to help save the nation’s agriculture industry benefited families and helped the Great Plains recover from the Dust Bowl. Furthermore, the poor conditions in the farm belt were also compounded by the Great Depression as it was in full swing as the Dust Bowl began to worsen. In addition, World War I was also underway which caused a high demand for agricultural products, such as wheat, corn, and potatoes to be at its peak, which lured many people to the farm belt with the false expectation that farming

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

Eventually, after years of drought and dust storms, the plains people had to accept some form of aid or fall to the lowest

According to answers.com, a dust bowl is a region reduced to aridity by drought and dust storms. The best-known dust bowl is doubtless the one that hit the United States between 1933 and 1939.

Women who stayed hung wet sheets in the windows in a useless attempt to keep the dust at bay. They breathed, ate, and drank the dust, rushing through their meals to try to keep as much as they could out of their systems. Each and every single one of them dreaded the next dust storm.

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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.

In 1934-1936 the actual Dust Bowl happened. This was when the massive and deadly storms hit the prosper and growing Midwest Panhandle. In 1936, a more severe storm spread out of the plains and across most of the nation. The drought years were followed with record breaking heavy rains, blizzards, tornadoes and floods. In September 1930, it rained over five inches in a very short time in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The flooding in Oklahoma was accompanied by a dirt storm, which damaged several small buildings and other farm structures. Later that year, the regions were hit again by a strong dirt storm from the southwest until the winds gave way to a blizzard from the north.

The timeline of the dustbowl characterizes the fall of agriculture during the late 1920s, primarily the area in and surrounding the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl was created by a disruption in the areas natural balance. “With the crops and native vegetation gone, there was nothing to hold the topsoil to the ground” (“Dust Bowl and” 30). Agricultural expansion and dry farming techniques caused mass plowing and allowed little of the land to go fallow. With so little of the deeply rooted grass remaining in the Great Plains, all it took was an extended dry season to make the land grow dry and brittle. When most of the land had been enveloped by the grass dust storms weren’t even a yearly occurrence, but with the exponentiation of exposed land, the winds had the potential to erode entire acres. This manmade natural disaster consumed such a large amount of the South's agriculture that it had repercussions on the national level. The Dust Bowl was a “97-million-acre section

The dust bowl was caused by a combination of environmental conditions and use of new farming technology. In Oklahoma during the time of the dust bowl people people decided to leave “until it rains” (Document A: Henderson Letter). This quote implies that drought is the cause for the dust bowl and that the people of the Oklahoma panhandle believed that once the drought ended, the dust bowl would as well. While it does appear that drought is one of the causes of the dust bowl, “farmers and plows on the plains” also played a role in “destroying the delicate ecological balance that had evolved there” (Document D: Historian, Professor David Worster). This quote suggests that it was the use of technology and over farming that ultimately resulted in the dust bowl. In reality there were numerous causes such as “soils

The Dust Bowl occurred in the 1930s and lasted roughly eight years. The main area of impact was the Southern Plains. The Northern Plains were not affected as much. However the north did receive some dust and droughts. The Dust Bowl did not help the Depression either. It actually lengthened it. The effects of the Depression were felt worldwide.

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).

With many farmers having such high yields, there was an abundance of crops so the prices fell and a farmer had to plant more in order to have enough money to support their families. The Enlarged Homestead Act guaranteed 320 acres of land to farmers who were willing to take land that were considered to be marginal and could not be irrigated well. They plowed up the virgin soil and planted acres and acres of golden wheat, leaving the land vulnerable to the elements after the yearly harvest. The farmers also implemented the use of fossil fuel ran machinery that made it easier to plow up hundreds of acres in a short period of time, which exposed even more soil than what would have been open to the elements had the farming been done by an animal pulled plow. The massive influx of farmers because of that act caused major soil erosion which was made worse by the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

Did you know that chinchillas took dust baths? Well Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Colorado had took their own in the years of 1930’s. The Dust Bowl was a ten year dust storm that was a continuous downpour destroying millions of agriculture and lives of thousands of people. The Dust Bowl later called the “ Dirty Thirties” was caused by a continuous drought that happened a year before the Dust Bowl and the next ten years of it. Over the ten years of the Dust Bowl, the more time that grew the more dust and destruction it caused to everything around it.