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The Dark Skies Were Filled With Soil And Dust That Rained

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The dark skies were filled with soil and dust that rained down on the American Midwest. These powerful black blizzards would label this period of time as the Dirty Thirties or Dust Bowl. At the beginning of the 1930s, the Great Plains farmers were the most successful in the nation. As one of the worst man-made disasters the widespread farming used harsh farming techniques that exposed the topsoil. Then a series of devastating dust storms hit the southern Great Plains of the United States between 1932 and 1939, damaging the ecology and agriculture structures. The Dust Bowl of the 1930’s was a significant event in US History because it completely stopped agricultural production for almost a decade in the West, caused widespread…show more content…
Animals died with their stomachs filled of dirt, their eyes cemented shut when their tears mixed with dust or suffocated. Farming production completely stopped for a decade forcing many families to leave the region.
The economic repercussions lead to many farmers losing their homes and farms, which resulted in the largest resettlement in US history. Farmers failed to pay their mortgages and many lost their homes to bank foreclosures. Some families just packed up all their belongings and left. “As their livelihoods disappeared, more than 350,000 people fled the Great Plains during the 1930s” (Dust Bowl). The mass migration destroyed many rural communities as 2000,000 headed west to California. Ann Marie Low stated, “Now another prolonged drouth has struck at a time the whole country is suffering a severe depression. Men like Dad and the Holmes brothers, who have been here a long time, who have plenty of land and no mortgages, have a chance to hang on until better times come again ” (Dust Bowl 1931-1939). Those who left were know as Dust Bowl refugees and called Okies.
These Dust Bowl refugees replaced Mexicans as the cheep labor source in the California fields and were a target for discrimination. They lived in poverty with no adequate housing and many lived in work camps. Walter Davenport wrote, “ “They straggled in across the Yuma Bridge down in the southeast corner of the state looking much like war-zone refugees. There were a
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