The Dust Bowl Of The Great West

“A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people”, stated Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (1) Have you ever heard of the Dust Bowl? The Dust Bowl took place in the 1930s. In the Great Plains of the United States. It covered parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. The blowing dust caused hardships for many farmers making it difficult for them to work their farmland. Eventually, many of them packed what they could into their cars or trucks and headed west to California.

You’re a kid living in the Dust Bowl. “Cough-cough.” You try to force down. Moving your plow back and forth you try to look over the barren wasteland you call home. Wind roaring in your eyes as you see a brown funnel full a dirt and dust less than a mile away. Driving for cover your world fads black. The Dust Bowl was made by a drought and high winds. The drought killed the prairie grass keeping the soil down and the high winds picked it up to make dust storms. The Dust Bowl was harmful to children that affect their education, how they had fun, their health, and spilt families apart.

In the early 1930s through the 1936, a massive event called the Dust Bowl occurred also known as the Dirty Thirties, dramatically affected areas within Oklahoma, Kansas, and Northern Texas due to extensive windstorms. This event forced numerous people to evacuate their hometowns. The Dust Bowl had a significant impact on society, it caused farmers to have no control of their agriculture because of the dried up land. Once the land dried up there was no way to renovate or replace the soil. This dilemma lead to more citizens to depend on the government for help, financially.

The farmers could have prevented the Dust Bowl if they had not cut down all the trees and killed all the native greasses that were holding the soil together and acting as windbreaks. In the article “Dry Farming” by encyclopedia.com it says “. . .Great Plains farmers, aided by steel plows, uprooted most of the native prairie grass, which held moisture in the soil. Strong winds and extended droughts had not disturbed the land when the grasses covered it” (Dry Farming 1). Because the farmers cut all the native grasses and trees, the soil lost the anchors that were holding it together. These two things caused the soil to loosen and allowed the wind to go free, without anything to stop it.

During the 1930s, the United States faced various struggles such as The Great Depression- a time in which farmers suffered severely through many challenges. One of the challenges faced by farmers was the Dust Bowl tragedy; a dust storm affecting many farms throughout the midwest. The tragic Dust Bowl was a consequence due to lack of rainfall in the dry prairie lands, decreasing crop growth, and overproduction in farming causing more exposed land. It occurred because of advancements in farming technology, drought in the Great Plains, and the harvesting of grasslands.

During the 1930‟s and several years to follow, many people in the United States felt the struggles caused by the Great Depression. Families and individuals in the Plains, a term used when referring to the surrounding areas near Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska, were hit by the Dust Bowl, to make matters worse. Dozens of dust storms would obliterate these people‟s crops and agriculture – for some, the only source of income. Millions of acres of land became so full of dust that the soil was just not suitable for the growth of crops. This made life extremely difficult for people in this area because their homes, the only places they‟ve known for years, had become useless and torn down due to the excessive amounts of dust.

The Dust Bowl also known as the dirty thirties was a major crisis that happened in the United States in the 1930's. Drought struck over the Midwest causing their crops to perish and eventually making a majority of the farmers go into poverty. Thus causing them to flee from their homes and their belongings. looking for opportunities elsewhere. Some walked, some took the train, and some drove if they were fortunate enough to afford one. There are many different primary sources that picture this crisis which all lead to the conclusion that it was a devastating era in the Midwest and filled with misfortune. A few primary examples are as follows.

People who lived in the Dust Bowl region lost their homes, jobs, and some, even their families. The dust storms were a result of years of treating farmland poorly. Mass migrations of Midwesterners began to occur as dust storms blew away whole houses. The Dust Bowl was an American catastrophe leaving millions of people homeless and jobless. The United States was left in panic as millions of westerners migrated in search of new jobs and homes.

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

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 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

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

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

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

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.