History Of The Dust Bowl

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.

Lots of adults and children lost their lives during the 1930s. On April 18,1935, a gigantic, black cloud piled up on the western horizon it was called the Dust Bowl. What caused the Dust Bowl?  The Dust Bowl was caused by mechanization, drought, and a significant loss of grass.

In the 1930’s America had a lot of hard times and one of them was the Dust Bowl.The Dust Bowl was part of the great depression in America.A lot of farms, cities, and families were hit by the Dust Bowl and it affected their life. The Dust Bowl started on Thursday, April 18, 1935 and it happened in the western states of the U.S. and it went to the southern Great Plains. What reasons made the Dust Bowl occur? There were three main causes for the storms and the Dust Bowl that was created: destruction of Prairie Grass, mechanization, and lack of rainfall.

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

For Dust Bowl residents, life was almost unbearable. The Dust Bowl was given its name after a huge dust storm in 1914 by Robert E. Geiger. The name “Dust Bowl” is very fitting because of the multiple dust storms that blew through the Great Plains during the 1930s. This also shows that everyone viewed the Great Plains as a dusty and treacherous place to live. In addition, “About 40 big storms swept through the Dust Bowl in 1935, with dust often reducing visibility to less than a mile” (Lookingbill 1). This

The dust bowl ran for approximately 10 years, from 1931 to 1939. It devastated crops and farmers alike, forced children to wear dust masks to and from school, and caused a nationwide epidemic as more and more people found that they couldn’t keep paying for foods and other essentials.

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

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.

The ‘Dirty Thirties’ is perhaps one of the most known time periods in American History. During the 1930s, the worst and longest drought occurred in the United States, this was also know as the Dust Bowl. According to Christopher Klein, the Dust Bowl is considered both a man-made and natural disaster. In fact, many events contributed to the Dust Bowl such as poor farming techniques, a severe drought, and economic depression.

The Dust Bowl was a treacherous storm, which occurred in the 1930's, that affected the midwestern people, for example the farmers, and which taught us new technologies and methods of farming. As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place

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

Fine powder coating people's lips, inhaling dust with every breath you take. That is what it was like during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. On Thursday. April 18, 1935, a huge, black, billowing cloud piled up on the western horizon. The people in the Southern Great Plains called the the dust storms dusters. It darkened the midday sky and carried off valuable topsoil and made topsoil erosion. Children and the elderly died from breathing in the dust they called it “dust pneumonia.” Cattle such as chickens and cows couldn’t protect and defend themselves from the dust. They ran around in circles until they fell and died from breathing in so much dust. While humans could cover their mouths and eyes with cloth, scarves, and goggles to protect themselves. Some people had even considered that it was the end of the world. Some of the many factors that caused the Dust Bowl to happen were, over plowing the soil and the cows and buffalo over grazing the grass and, the lack of rainfall or drought in the great plains region.

Avis Carlson described her life during the Dust Bowl. She said, “A trip to water to rinse the grit from our lips. And then back to bed with washcloths over our noses. We try to lie still, because every turn stirs the dust on the blankets.” There had always been dust storms on the Great Plains, so on March 15, 1935, Kansas ignored the warnings about a huge dust storm racing their way. There were many hardships that came with the Dust Bowl, but what actually started the Dust Bowl? The Dust Bowl was caused by the lack of rain, overplowing, and destruction of grassland.

During the 1900’s a lot of devastating events occurred that led to the Dust Bowl. Some of these events were the stock market crash and the Great Depression. Specifically, the 1930’s was a period that held very severe dust storms. The dust storms remained extremely critical for about 6 years; this period of time became known as The Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl had tremendously negative effects on both the people in the region and the land in which the dust storms were located.