Dust Bowl Research Paper

437 Words1 Page

The Dust Bowl is a drought that occurred in the southern plains region of the United States. The Dust swept crossed from Nebraska to Texas. The Dust Bowl occurred in the late 1930’s. The massive dust storms did not begin until 1931. The Dust Bowl was a long-term disaster that impacted people for a long time. The conditions were very scary and last for a while. During the Dust Bowl, serve dust storms would sweep across the great plains. The serve dust storms were often called “Black Blizzards”. The dust storms would also cause the sky to darken for days at a time. The dust would drift like snow and the residents would have to clean it up with a shovel. The worst of the storm occurred in Oklahoma and about three million tons of topsoil were blown off the great plains. Lastly, the dust would work its way through people’s homes and would leave a type of coating on their furniture, food, and skin. …show more content…

A series of federal land acts had passed in the 1920’s, which encouraged people to farm across the great plains. The wheat prices in the 1920’s was also increasing, which encouraged the farmers to plow up millions of acres around the great plains. This event was one of the biggest factors that caused the Dust Bowl. During the Great Depression, crops began to fail, which also exposed the over-plowed farmland. Eventually the eroding soil led to massive dust storms. Many people developed dust pneumonia and chest pain. The citizens also had extremely difficult time breathing. Citizens also died, ranging from hundreds to several thousand people. There is no clear estimate of how many people

Show More
Related

  • Rio Grande Valley Littering Research Paper

    285 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the Rio Grande Valley littering is a big issue when it comes to animals and their habitats. Many individuals tend to throw trash on the streets and oceans when they go to beaches, for example South Padre Island. When people go on vacations, they always leave their trash on the sandy beaches and do not pick it up. This kind of action result in a bird confusing the plastic garbage for food and consuming it. Garbage is very dangerous for animals it can injure them and damage their digestive system which can sometimes result in death.

    Read More

  • Dust Bowl Dbq

    585 Words  | 2 Pages

    To begin with, the “Dust Bowl” was one of the causes of economic fallout which resulted in the Great Depression. Because the “Dust Bowl” destroyed crops which were used to sell and make profit, the government had to give up a lot of money in order to try and help the people and land affected by the “Dust Bowl”. The “Dust Bowl” refers to a time during the 1930’s where the Great Plains region was drastically devastated by drought. All of the areas (Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico) all had little to no rainfall, light soil, and high winds, which were not a very suitable combination. The drought lasted from 1934 to 1937, most of the soil during the drought lacked the better root system of grass.

    Read More

  • Okies and the Hardships of the Dust Bowl

    891 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains area in the 1930s. Much of the region was an agricultural area and relied on it for most of their economy. Combined with The Great Depression and the dust storms, farmers in the Great Plains area were severely hurt. These farmers were seeking opportunity elsewhere near the Pacific where they were mistreated by the others already there. The mistreatment is a form of disenfranchisement, by excluding and segregating a group of people from the rest of society. The disenfranchisement of the Oklahoma farmers during the 1930s was caused by a combination of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression which led to the farmers being forced to move west where they were mistreated because there were not enough jobs.

    Read More

  • How Did The Dust Bowl Affect People

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Dust Bowl occurred for many reasons, most all our fault. “Some of the reasons that the Dust Bowl occurred were over-farming, livestock overgrazing, drought and poor farming practices.” (Dust Bowl facts and summary) Because of this negative experience it now teached us to be careful and now we know what to do to prevent this.“When drought struck from 1934 to 1937, the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor.”("Dust Bowl Facts and summary") That's really bad for the farmers because then the wind can easily pick up the dirt off the

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast The Dust Bowl

    453 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Dust Bowl in the 1930s was a very horrific event in the Southern Plains region of the United States. This was a period of severe windstorms & dust-storms that would blow over hundreds of miles. This stripped the soil of nutrients, and damaged the ecology and agriculture of these American lands. The 2012 drought in the Central Great Plains was a period that lasted only 4 months, through May to August, that eclipsed the record of the Dust Bowl, for the driest period. The Dust Bowl and the 2012 drought compare and contrast in many ways.

    Read More

  • What Caused The Dust Bowl?

    2377 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Dust Bowl, a tragic era lasting from 1930 to 1939, was characterized by blinding dust storms. These dust storms were composed of strong winds that blew across dry, cultivated soil for hundreds of miles, which could remain active for ten hours or more (Hansen, 667). The storms actually had the potential to drag on for days on end. In 1939, for example, one storm stop blowing for more than one hundred hours.

    Read More

  • Dust Bowl Cause

    1530 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Midwest had been experiencing a severe drought when the wind started to collect any loose dry dirt, building up gigantic dust clouds. The 1920s were so prosperous with many new inventions and lifestyles being adapted. Farmers now had the aid of a tractor to help plow the fields faster and farther.2 Was the newly plowed dirt the cause of the Dust Bowl, historian, Professor R. Douglas Hurt seems to think so. Professor R. Douglas Hurt is the Director of the Graduate Program in Agricultural History and Rural Studies at Iowa State University in Ames. Professor Hurt wrote the book, The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History, based on historical events and his opinion of the what caused the Dust Bowl.3 Professor Hurt said, "Dust storms in the Southern Great Plains, and indeed, in the Plains as a whole, were not unique to the 1930's..

    Read More

  • Dust Bowl Essay

    1207 Words  | 3 Pages

    Farming was the major growing production in the United States in the 1930's. Panhandle farming attached many people because it attracted many people searching for work. The best crop that was prospering around the country was wheat. The world needed it and the United States could supply it easily because of rich mineral soil. In the beginning of the 1930's it was dry but most farmers made a wheat crop. In 1931 everyone started farming wheat. The wheat crop forced the price down from sixty-eight cents/ bushels in July 1930 to twenty-five cents/ bushels July 1931. Many farmers went broke and others abandoned their fields. As the storms approached the farmers were getting ready. Farmers increased their milking cowherds. The cream from the cows was sold to make milk and the skim milk was fed to the chickens and pigs. When normal feed crops failed, thistles were harvested, and when thistles failed, hardy souls dug up soap weed, which was chopped in a feed mill or by hand and fed to the stock. This was a backbreaking, disheartening chore, which would have broken weaker people. But to the credit of the residents of the Dust Bowl, they shouldered their task and carried on. The people of the region made it because they knew how to take the everyday practical things, which had been used for years and adapt them to meet the crisis.

    Read More

  • Key Factors Of The Dust Bowl

    712 Words  | 2 Pages

    The drought caused a lot of unfavorable conditions for farmers in the southwest. In Worster’s book he says “Few of us want to live in the region now. There is too much wind, dirt, flatness, space, barbed wire, drought, uncertainty, hard work…” (Worster 105). The droughts caused many unfavorable condition throughout the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. Thus, roughly one-third of Texas and Oklahoman farmers left their homes and headed to California in search of migrant work. The droughts during the 1930s are a drastically misrepresented factor of the Dust bowl considering “the 1930s droughts were, in the words of a Weather Bureau scientist, the worst in the climatological history of the country.” (Worster 232) Some of the direct effects of the droughts were that many of the farmers’ crops were damaged by deficient rainfall, high temperatures, and high winds, as well as insect infestations and dust storms that accompanied these conditions. What essentially happened was that the soil 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.” The constant dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion. The effects of the drought happened so rapidly and progressively over time that

    Read More

  • The Causes Of The Dust Bowl

    730 Words  | 2 Pages

    First the northern plains were hit by the dry spell, but by July the southern plains were in the drought. Because of the late planting and early frost, much of the wheat was damaged when the spring winds of 1932 began to blow. The region was blasted by a horrible dirt storm, which killed almost all the wheat. Although the dirt storms were fewer in 1934, it was the year, which brought the Dust Bowl national attention. A severe storm blew dirt from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. In spite of the terrific storm in the year 1934 there was a satisfying break from the blowing dirt and tornadoes of the previous year. But nature had another trick up her sleeve, the year was extremely hot with new records being made. Before the year had run its course, hundreds of people in Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas had died from the heat. The weather in the Dust Bowl again made the national headlines. A description of this storm of coming was made by a farmer:" The storm causes a tremendous amount of damage and suffering mentally and physically some of the conditions were animals dying from dust in the lungs and people developing dust pneumonia.” A giant dust storm engulfs Oklahoma. These storms destroyed vast areas of the Great Plains farmland. The methods of fighting the dust were as many and varied as were the means of finding a way to get something to eat. Canned foods had became the only way anybody could eat. Every possible crack was plugged, sheets were placed over windows and blankets were hung behind doors. Often the places were so tightly plugged against the dust that the houses became extremely hot and stuffy. Men, women and children stayed in their houses and tied handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths. When they dared to leave, they added goggles to protect their eyes. Houses were shut tight, cloth was wedged in the cracks of the doors and windows but still the fine silt forced its way into houses, schools

    Read More

  • The Dust Bowl

    1202 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Dust Bowl was a brutal time period in Midwestern history; farmers were pushed off their land and forced to find new homes in new states.

    Read More

  • The Dust Bowl Sparknotes

    1035 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his award-winning account of the devastating environmental and cultural effects of the Dust Bowl that enveloped America’s Midwest in the 1930’s, Timothy Egan attributes the disaster to the collective cause of reckless man-made agricultural practices, even as he surveys the tragic individual stories of the people who suffered from it. He argues that the combined effects of drought and a heat wave in the early 1930s, and man’s hubris and environmental ignorance and irresponsibility throughout the decade caused the Dust Bowl, and yet finds compassion for the small homestead farmer and the weak and powerless families who inhabited the region and lived through the disaster rather than picking up stakes and moving on. His story is a traumatic

    Read More

  • How Has The Dust Bowl Changed Agriculture

    760 Words  | 2 Pages

    The dust bowl was the worst environmental disaster in the U.S history. Farming practices changed as a result of the Dust bowl. Farmers changed how they plow / take care of their field.There are also many conservation programs and measures implemented as a result and many farmers have fixed drought problems so their soil does not get to dry.

    Read More

  • The Dust Bowl

    1050 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 take all it could from the earth while giving next to nothing back.

    Read More

  • Life During the Dust Bowl

    753 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Dust Bowl was a rough time for farmers in the 1930’s. The Dust Bowl was a drought that had many dust storms involved, which lasted about a decade. What was life like for the people in the dust bowl? People spent a decade of their lives trying to survive in a drought, having to fight diseases, shoveling dust out of their homes, and watching as all their crops get blown away. Some residents thought it was the end of the world.

    Read More

More about Dust Bowl Research Paper

Open Document