The Dark Skies Were Filled With Soil And Dust That Rained

A major drought, over-cultivation, and a country suffering from one of the greatest depressions in history are all it took to displace hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners and send them, and everything they had, out west. The Dust Bowl ruined crops all across the Great Plains region, crops that people depended on for survival. When no food could be grown and no money could be made, entire families, sometimes up to 8 people or more, packed up everything they had and began the journey to California, where it was rumored that jobs were in full supply. Without even closing the door behind them in some cases, these families left farms that had been with them for generations, only to end up in a foreign place where they were neither welcomed

But when the Dust Bowl came the american economy dropped. For instance to explain more about the Dust Bowl, in a article written by Marcia Trimarchi, who studied English at Skidmore College wrote. “They settled there to farm. They were prosperous in the decades that followed, but when the 1930s rolled in, so did strong winds, drought and clouds of dust that plagued nearly 75 percent of the United States between 1931 and 1939, The era became known as the legendary Dust Bowl.” (Trimarchi). In a article made by Robin A. Fanslow a writer for the American Folklife Center it illustrates about what the Dust Bowl did. “In 1932, many of the farms dried up and blew away creating what became known as the "Dust Bowl." (Fanslow). Most of the dust from the Dust Bowl created many storms as said in a page written by Cary Nelson, a professor at the University of Illinois. “In 1932, The number of dust storms increase. Fourteen are reported this year; next year there will be 38.” (Nelson). These dust storms were called black blizzards and they came often, then the worst dust storm came in 1935 on April 14. “Black Sunday. The worst "black blizzard" of the Dust Bowl occurs, causing extensive damage.” Writes Cary Nelson (Nelson).

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

The "dirty thirties," as many called it, was a time when the earth ran amok in southern plains for the better part of a decade. This great American tragedy, which was more devastating environmentally as well as economically than anything in America's past or present, painstakingly tested the spirit of the southern plainsmen. The proud folks of the south refused at first to accept government help, optimistically believing that better days were ahead. Some moved out of the plains, running from not only drought but from the new machine-controlled agriculture. As John Steinbeck wrote in the bestseller The Grapes of Wrath, "it was not nature that broke the people-they could handle the drought. It was business farming, seeking a better return on land investments and buying tractors to pursue it, that had broken these people, smashing their identity as natural beings wedded to the land."(pg. 58) The machines, one-crop specialization, non-resident farming, and soil abuse were tangible threats to the American agriculture, but it was the capitalistic economic values behind these land exploitations that drove the plainsmen from their land and created the Dust Bowl.

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.

During the 1930’s,a whole decade was full of dust bowl’s which were causing people to lose everything and becoming poor.The plains were where the dust bowls started spreading to countries like Kansas,Oklahoma,Texas and New Mexico.The dust bowls would kill off all the crops and leave areas with drought.people would start moving out of the countries and others would stay.

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

“As a ‘double whammy’ of drought and depression deepened on the Great Plains, more and more farmers gave up or were forced off of their land” (Winter). According to Bart Robinson, an eyewitness, “Many people thought it was a plague” (Robinson). The migrant workers started moving away. “When pioneers headed west in the late 19th century, many couldn’t resist the lure of the tall grassy land in the semiarid Midwestern and Southern plains of the United States” (“Black Sunday”). Many people did travel to other states. Though “the exact scale of migrants is unknown but it’s estimated that up to 400,000 Southwesterns moved west during the 1930s and to 300,000 moved into California a decade earlier” (Sander). Dust Bowl refugees found roots in California (Winter). “Sometimes they found work, but mostly they found heartbreak and anger” (Robinson). They had once “owned profitable farms. Then they had nothin’ but hunger and dirt and two cents a barrel” (Robinson). Some migrant workers had trouble finding houses within their price range. “Many of the migrant workers lived in labor camps”

In the years leading to 1930, the Great Plains experienced a healthy amount of rain. The drought began in 1930 when the rain ceased. That year proved tough for farmers in the Great Plains, but they had no idea what was yet to come. In 1931, dust storms began to sweep through the Great Plains. Behind the dust, families stayed hidden inside their homes using wet clothes and such to guard the window sills and door frames. The families affected by the Dust Bowl were trapped inside of their homes for the six years of raging dust storms. The Great Depression was a number of years that consisted of workers being laid off, no job openings available, and an overall economic low in the United States. The Great Depression, which started in the years leading up to the drought, resulted in poor living conditions, including little to no income, scarce food, and unclean water. The Dust Bowl amplified those conditions for the affected families. (Steinbeck, Lewis, “Dust Bowl”

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

This, combined with the high unemployment and collapsed economy of the Depression, forced families to leave their farms in search of work. In 1932, one in four families living in the Dust Bowl was forced off its land (Conlin, 685). Most of them headed to California (686). They were called "Okies" and once they got to California, things usually weren't much better.

Similarly the residents of the dust bowl along with victims of the dust storms leave their home towns and head to California but are faced with miss treatment and abuse from the native residents of California. Migrant camps began to form as a result of no work and no where else to

Another source writes that “Having lost their crops and livestock thousands of families left the region, and many had lost their farms to bank foreclosure” (Dust Bowl 1931-1939). This same source also writes that “Those who left hoping for greener pastures in California still struggled.” Additionally this source found that “ About 25% of the population left the affected states and by 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the plains states” (Sam Montana). Furthermore to the research families were desperate to feed their kids. Cellania, Miss wrote that They were lured by rumors of plentiful jobs, great weather, and fertile field.”