The Dust Bowl Dbq

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.

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 was "the darkest moment in the twentieth-century life of the southern plains," (pg. 4) as described by Donald Worster in his book "The Dust Bowl." It was a time of drought, famine, and poverty that existed in the 1930's. It's cause, as Worster presents in a very thorough manner, was a chain of events that was perpetuated by the basic capitalistic society's "need" for expansion and consumption. Considered by some as one of the worst ecological catastrophes in the history of man, Worster argues that the Dust Bowl was created not by nature's work, but by an American culture that was working exactly the way it was planned. In essence, the Dust Bowl was the effect of a society, which deliberately set out to

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.

One of the main causes of the Dust Bowl was the poor techniques that farmers used to plant and harvest their crops. Most of the Roaring Twenties consisted of a continual cycle of debt for the American farmers as their production prices

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

Not only did they have to worry about breathing in the dust, they also had to worry about about their pregnancy if they were pregnant. “Thousands of people died from dust pneumonia, with babies, children, and the elderly, particularly susceptible.”(“Eating, Sleeping, Breathing Dust: Health Hazards of the Dust Bowl”) .The the dust had swept in so fast and had killed both people old and new. The topic of this is that people who died young never really got a chance in

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

No one is to blame for the dust bowl but the farmers and drought. If it were not for this mixture the dustbowl would not have happend. There was no better farm land in America than in the great planes but when the farmes destroyed the native grasses the top soil was exposed and blown away and with it jobs and a major

In the early 1900s crops for farmers where it was fertile and productive investment, until the climate started to heat up and dry out all of the land. The wind was turning the soil the wrong side up (Egan, p. 114). The High Plains were the most affected, and the wind was the contributing element that made it dangerous for people to live there. In the early 1930s, people were forced out of their homes and had to head somewhere safe. The climate had been dangerous with the wind erosions for a decade or so, and the dust was tearing away the crops, putting dust and other particles in the air, making it thick and hard for people to see when traveling across the country. People were afraid that in the future they would not be able to survive in the High Plains and feel secure that it was a safe place. The Worst Hard Time focused on the Dust Bowl and how it affected people in the High Plains. Parched land was one of the main conditions that lead to despair being found among the people living in the High Plains. Another issue that brought up the theme of despair in the text/book, is the economics of the Dust Bowl. The Great Depression was a major effect leaving many people without their life savings. Lastly, the Dust Bowl coincided with the events leading to Black Sunday, as the winds and the declining economy started to take a toll on people and their homes. In states like Texas and Oklahoma there was dust in people’s eyes, and they were unable to see anything in front of them.

Three-fourths of the families living on the Southern Plains during the dust bowl stayed for many reasons. The dust bowl was an event that occurred during the 1930s,where extreme dust storms tore through the southern plains. Many of these families did not leave the plains since they did not have the money to actually leave and travel west. In the film, “Surviving the Dust Bowl”, it said that most people were poor during the dust bowl since they had no income on their crops. On the other hand, the families didn’t want to leave since they took so much pride on their land that they got from the government.

As a result of The Dust Bowl, many farms were affected and destroyed leaving hundreds of families with any crops. During the game

The dust went into eyes, noses, and mouths. Breathing became very difficult. If you were eating a meal you could taste the dust. Those are a few of the reasons that made the physical aspect of the dust bowl much harder to live through. Next, the dust bowl began in the 1930s, during the great depression. The people living in the dust bowl had to shovel out of their houses because the dust covered their doors. “In the morning you could barely see the sun and by the end of the day you couldn’t see anything,” said Margie Daniels. The day known as black Sunday was one of the worst dust storms in American history. Children didn’t know if their dad would make it back inside because he couldn’t see through the dust. In addition, dust pneumonia was

During the 1930,there was a dust storm in many states which people didn’t know when it was going to happend. Also the farmers couldn’t grow crops and it also killed their animals. They would do anything to keep their family alive and sometimes moving was the only thing they could do.When they moved people were not kind them. A couple years later the farmers was able to go back to their homes.