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 "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.

Other asylums included Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and New Mexico. The vast majority of Dust Bowl migrants stayed on the West Coast permanently.

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

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

The dust bowl was an outcome of various problems that were accumulated during the years. The

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

“People were destitute and frightened by the events that were sweeping the nation and this made it extremely difficult for Dust Bowl migrants to start a new life in places like California”. (30 Dust Bowl Facts: US History For Kids**) The dust bowl was a hard time, since it was all dark and the dust was killing main food sources and people. People couldn’t work,since the dust was so dreadful and people would try to move away from the dust into another state. Another problem during the dust bowl was, “So much static electricity built up between the ground and airborne dust” (Christopher Klein).

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

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.

Natural disasters can cause massive damage, but few realize that many barely last a few days. If so much can be done in such a minute amount of time, imagine what a decade would do. The dust bowl was a weather event that lasted for the entirety of an eight-year drought and lingered for multiple years after. The result: Economic devastation for the agriculture of the area. The dust bowl was a large contributor to agriculture’s role in the great depression and defines how we approach environmental protection today.

If I was part of one of the families living on the Southern plains during this time, I think I would have stayed. I would have tried to stay just to say that I had made it through the Dust Bowl, and could share my experience with many others. I would have also liked to see how it was like being in the Last Man Standing club. Next, if I was part of one of the families, I would have probably thought that the dust storms were going to end soon enough, and it would have been a waste to move then. It would probably be very nerve-wracking, stressful, and depressing to see the people leaving each day, but I think it would still be worth staying. Finally, I think you would become mentally stronger and braver since you would try to survive in one of

In what was one of the most fertile areas of the United States, one of the Nation’s worst agricultural disasters occurred. No rain came so crops did not grow, leaving the soil exposed to the high winds that hit the area in the 1930s. Stretching over a 150,000 square mile area and encompassing parts of five states—these being Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico—the Dust Bowl was a time where over 100 million acres of topsoil were stripped from fertile fields leaving nothing but barren lands and piles of dust everywhere (Ganzel). While things were done to alleviate the problem, one must question whether or not anyone has learned from this disaster. If not, one must look into the possibility that the United States may be struck

This is a picture of The Dust Bowl. In this picture there is some houses sitting on a land of dirt. There is a few people standing outside their houses that look fearful. There is a huge cloud of dust coming fast towards the people and their homes. The dust looks thick and you can’t see anything behind the dust cloud.

“Surviving the Dust Bowl” is an episode of the T.V. series American Experience, a historical documentary show created by Henry Hampton and Stephen Fitzmeyer. This episode outlines the struggles of living in what became to be known as the Dust Bowl from early to late 1930’s. Devastating droughts had become to affect midwestern and southern plains in 1931, causing many crops to die and large areas of land to become infertile. “Surviving the Dust Bowl” persuades the viewer to experience the perseverance required by southwestern farmers to overcome the unimaginable adversities that they placed upon themselves during the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. The documentary does this through two main ways. Most of the movie is comprised of black and white footage from that time. This adds a sense of connection, because the clips exemplify how frightening it would have been for the farmers and their families to see huge clouds of black smoke rolling over them, and the fact that it’s on camera helps the viewer connect to it. Over this footage, the directors inlay multiple survivor retellings to show the differences and similarities between families that stayed during the Dust Bowl.