History Of The Dust Bowl

What and where was the Dust Bowl? The Dust Bowl was a big, dark, and terrible dust storm in the Midwestern and southern plains. It occurred because of droughts and unhealthy farming practices (Modern American Poetry). The Dust Bowl began in 1931 and ended 1939 (Alchin). The worst year was 1935 when the biggest black blizzard happened (Gregory). This storm occurred on Palm Sunday, April 14, 1935 and was called Black Sunday (Public Broadcasting System). Tons of dirt was formed into massive black clouds. Families would try to seal their homes so the dust couldn’t come in, meals would have to been eaten before the dust would get in or it would cover the meals, and people would suffer because they would also get health problems from it (Alchin).

Many people had to leave their homes to find new lives. The Dust Bowl was a disaster!

This event, partnered with the Great Depression, changed the way agricultural business was done in America.

The Dust Bowl was a storm that was created by strong winds blowing topsoil off of the fields of farmers. The winds would carry lots of dust, soil, dirt, and sand. The dust would leave sandy soils that drifted into dunes along the walls, fences, and ditches. It occurred in the Midwestern and southern plains of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas, however, the worst Dust Bowl area was where Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico bordered each other (Living History Farm). The places would not get any rainfall all season and sometimes not for years at all! The worst years had between 60 and 75 dust storms each year (Public Broadcasting System). In the second year of the Dust Bowl, 1932, there were as many as 14 black blizzards (Alchin). A black blizzard was a dust storm so thick and big, there was no daylight even in the middle of the day (Gregory). In 1933, President Roosevelt took office and created several legislative acts to try and help the farmers (Alchin). These acts included The Emergency Banking Act of 1933,

The Farm Credit Act of 1933, The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act, in addition to creating the Civilian Conservation Corps (Modern American Poetry). The Federal Surplus Relief Corporation was also created to help farmers (Living History Farm). Many farm animals were killed or bought by the government in order to help farmers support their families (Public Broadcasting System). Despite these acts, the largest agricultural strike in U.S. history occurred, leading to the creation of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (Modern American Poetry). By 1934, the Dust Bowl was declared the worst drought in U.S. history covering more than 75% of the country and 27 states (Living History Farm). This was due to 100 million acres already having been lost and 127 million acres being currently lost (Public Broadcasting System). Two more acts were created called the Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act and the Taylor Grazing Act (Gregory).
The Drought Relief Service, The Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, The Works Progress Administration, and The Soil Conservation Service were all created to help the country (Public Broadcasting System). At this point, over 850 million tons of topsoil had blown away (Alchin). In 1936, Los Angeles police chief Davis sent 125 police to keep undesirables from crossing borders into California (Public Broadcasting System). This led to the American Civil Liberty Union’s lawsuit against the city (Modern American Poetry). Do to the severity of the situation, President Roosevelt said, “ I see one third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished… the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little” (Living History Farm). Finally in 1938, some progress was made, due to the programs, research, and laws, that lead to reducing the soil loss by 65% (Living History Farm). The Dust Bowl Finally ended in the fall of 1939 but it took a few years for the land to heal completely (Alchin).
In the 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck wrote an amazing description of the devastating events (Public Broadcasting System).
“And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land” (Modern American Poetry).
This excerpt describes the desperation of 25%-30% of the country when their homes were lost and they needed to find new place to settle down (Gregory).

Over the course of the Dust Bowl, 2.5 million people migrated west looking for work and housing (Alchin). Most people couldn’t find reliable work and those who did made very little money. Many worked just for enough food to survive each day (Living History Farm). Because the dust filled the engines, it often took several weeks for a family to make it to California (Alchin). When they arrived, they found “Hoovervilles” made of tents or shacks without floors or plumbing as the only place to live, and had to follow the crops from town to town (Alchin). Wages were bare minimum and usually not enough to get basic necessities (Gregory). Add this to the stress of losing everything you have, often including loved ones while traveling, and it’s not hard to imagine why this was such a depressing

time.
The 1930s were plagued with bad luck for the majority of the country. The farmers of the Midwest had an especially hard time do to the conditions of the climate. The result of this treacherous decade was many new safety nets for America’s farmers and businessmen. Instead of dryland farming irrigation systems were put in place to help maintain the health of the fields, crops were rotated, trees were planted to help hold the roots down, and farmers stopped over grazing their fields (Modern American Poetry). Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt both contributed to the peaks and valleys of the system, however, the troubles of the decade taught lessons that would benefit country from then on.