The Dust Bowl, was also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies. This phenomenon occured because of severe drought and failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion. The Dust Bowl lasted for eight years. It was a yellowish-brown haze from the South and in rolling walls of black from the North. The simplest acts of life for example breathing, eating, and walking were no longer simple. Children wore dust masks to and from school, women hung wet sheets over windows in a fruitless attempt to stop the dust, and farmers watched helplessly as their crops blew away. The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains region devastated by drought in 1930s depression-ridden America. The 150,000-square-mile area, encompassing the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. The storms had little rainfall, light soil, and high winds, a potentially destructive combination. From 1934 to 1937 the drought struck the soil that lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” Recurrent dust storms wreaked desolation, choking cattle and pasture lands, and driving 60 percent of the population from the region. Most of these “exodusters” went to agricultural areas first, and then to cities, especially in the far west. Ranchers and farmers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, driven by the American agricultural ethos of expansion and a sense of autonomy from nature, aggressively exploited the land and set up the region for ecological disaster. Most early settlers used the land for livestock grazing until agricultural mechanization combined with high grain prices during WWI enticed farmers to plow up millions of acres of natural grass cover to plant wheat. In response, the federal government mobilized several New Deal agencies, principally the Soil Conservation Service formed in 1935, to promote farm rehabilitation. Working on the local level, the government instructed farmers to plant trees and grass to anchor the soil, to plow and terrace in contour patterns to hold rainwater, and to allow portions of farmland to lie fallow each year so the soil could regenerate. The government also purchased 11.3 million acres of submarginal land to keep it out of production. By 1941, much of the land was rehabilitated, but the region repeated its mistakes during WWII as farmers again plowed up grassland to plant wheat when grain prices rose. Drought threatened another disaster in the 1950s, prompting Congress to subsidize farmers in restoring millions of acres of wheat back to grassland.
Map of the areas the Dust Bowl affected in the 1930-1940's
Fact: By 1940, more than 2.5 million people had fled from the regions affected by the Dust Bowl. Nearly 10 percent moved to California.
Fact: By 1940, more than 2.5 million people had fled from the regions affected by the Dust Bowl. Nearly 10 percent moved to California.