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In the 1930s, reoccurring dust storms were prevalent in the southern Great Plains of the United States due to lack of soil preservation initiatives, severe droughts, and wind erosion. The massive dust storms often times prevented residents from participating in daily outdoor activities. People were forced to wear masks to minimize swirling particles in the air from irritating their lungs, and residents hopelessly sealed their windows and doors, but even these preventative measures did not successfully eliminate dust from entering their homes. These storms were often devastating, and they would greatly damage property, crops, and livestock. Because of the harsh living conditions, residents were often forced to abandon their homes to look for better opportunities, often in the West. This period of severe dust storms and wind erosion was named the Dust Bowl. It increased awareness about the …show more content…
importance of land management and conservation, caused federal programs dedicated to soil conservation to form, and led a migration to the West. The Dust Bowl was a period of time where environmental and human-made conditions created a natural crisis.
In the nineteenth century, multiple acts, such as the Homestead Act and the Timber Culture Act, were created to encourage people to settle in the West. Improvements in rural technology made farming in the Great Plains less difficult and time consuming. Gasoline-powered tractors and threshing machines made plowing, planting, and harvesting easier. Thus, agriculture improved drastically, but the soil conditions deteriorated. The majority of farmers were unaware of the importance of land conservation. Because the farmers recklessly plowed through the land, the topsoil was reduced to a fine dust, and the grass holding the land together was destroyed. Eventually, during the 1930s, drought struck the eastern half of the United States. With nothing to anchor the dirt down, the wind would create large dust storms that dug craters into the land, often called “buffalo wallows.” Due to these issues, federal programs dedicated to the protection and conservation of soil were
created. Because of the Dust Bowl’s destructive nature, actions were taken to conserve and protect the land. In April 1935, Hugh Hammond Bennett founded the Soil Conservation Service (SCS). He made it his mission to solve the problem of soil and wind erosion in the Great Plains. The SCS encouraged farmers to use conservation practices to prevent soil loss and wind erosion. It suggested that residents should farm in vegetative strips so that the plants served as a wind barrier. It also promoted conservation tillage, a method to remove weeds while leaving crop residues to increase the topsoil. Furthermore, the SCS categorized land by how much management and care was needed to repair the problems present; class I soils had the least amount of limitations, and class VI required the most care. Ultimately, the SCS significantly reduced the amount of severely wind-eroded areas, and it helped lessen the drought.
Egan notes, “No group of people took a more dramatic leap in lifestyle or prosperity, in such a short time, than wheat farmers on the Great Plains” (Egan 42). The revenue from selling wheat far exceeded the cost of producing the wheat, so the large profit attracted people to produce more and more wheat. On top of the high profit from wheat, the Great War caused the price of wheat to rise even more. The supply of wheat rose with the price, but Egan points to information to demonstrate that the rapid increase in production can lead to overproduction, which is damaging to the land. Also, the invention of the tractor also lead to overproduction of the land by creating the ability to dramatically cut the time it took to harvest acres. When the prices for wheat began to fall due to overproduction, this caused the farmers to produce even more output to be able to make the same earnings as when the prices were higher. The government also played a part in promoting the overproduction of the land. The Federal Bureau of Soils claimed that, “The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possessed. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted, that cannot be used up” (Egan 51). Egan points to factors such as a high profit margin, the Great War, tractors, increased outputs when wheat prices fell, and governmental claims that caused the people to overproduce the land of the Great Plains. Egan then gives examples of how the overproduction destroyed the land. Egan explains that the farmers saw their only way out was to plant more wheat. This overproduction tore up the grass of the Great Plains, thus making the land more susceptible to the severe dust storms of the Dust
The nature of the Southern Plains soils and the periodic influence of drought could not be changed, but the technological abuse of the land could have been stopped. This is not to say that mechanized agriculture irreparably damaged the land-it did not. New and improved implements such as tractors, one-way disk plows, grain drills, and combines reduced plowing, planting, and harvesting costs and increased agricultural productivity. Increased productivity caused prices to fall, and farmers compensated by breaking more sod for wheat. At the same time, farmers gave little thought to using their new technology in ways to conserve the
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.
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.
Imagine standing outside trying to farm your dying crops. All of a sudden, the sky gets dark. You look up and see a big, black cloud heading straight towards your town. You attempt to seek shelter, but it is too late. Cars come to a complete stop, and people rush to get cover. The cloud of dirt sweeps into your small town, and you can no longer see anything but only feel the gritty dirt blowing against your skin. This occurrence is what people experienced during the Dust Bowl. In the historical fiction book, Out of the Dust, the author, Karen Hesse, describes the hardships that Billie Jo and her family faced during the worst years of the Dust Bowl. Hesse depicts the effects of the dust storms, reasons for the occurrence of the dust storms,
Without it, trouble was bound to come”, meaning that this will play a role later on and it did. At first, it wasn’t so bad everything went well, there was plenty of rain and wheat, but when the first World War was over everything went to dookie. Farms began to fail, to a point that farmers just started to leave their land, then it just stopped rain, which is actually natural in the Great Plains, but since the soil lacked a strong root system it was easy for the wind to pick up loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, which they called ‘black blizzards’. Slowly this started to spiral out of control, as Jay Fitzgerald explained,” There is little disagreement that the Dust Bowl was the result of an almost perfect storm of environmental and economic events, starting in the early 1930s with a drought, and compounded by the enormous economic hardships caused by the Great Depression ”, not only was the Dust Bowl a horrible time period for the farmers, it also led to was the
During the 1930s, a great depression occurred and farmers had lost crops and profit. The dust bowl affected many people and their living conditions in the states of Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. This harsh drought lasted from 1934 to 1937 and caused many disappointments in the time being. The dust bowl was a devastating time for farmers and their families, because living conditions were rough, farmers didn't make any profit, and sickness occurred.
The Dust Bowl started during the Great Depression. During it, the dust blew everywhere unstoppable throughout northern Texas, south-western Oklahoma, and Kansas. A lot of these people moved to California in the hopes of a better life. Living during the Dust Bowl was horrible for the people. People suffered not only from the Great Depression, and also lived with tons of dirt flying everywhere, covering everyone. Almost everyone tried to cover the bottoms of their windows and doors with cloths to keep out dirt, but dust still managed to fly in. It was a very harsh life for those who lived during the Dust Bowl.
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.
During the 1930s, an epidemic like no other started to boil across the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl was an unfortunate period in areas across the Midwest that greatly affected many territories. This event occurred due to the lack of anything present in the ground combining with the high winds caused a serious of blinding dust storms. Unfortunately, this led to much the ruining of farms causing farmers to lose much of their crops in addition to sums of money. The New Deal would ultimately be established to help those farmers that lost everything through different programs. One of the most significant parts of this event is that it forced the United States government to get involved in farming throughout the Midwest.
Right before the dust bowl began, the Great Plains became a hotspot for farming. Many people started to seek out places to plant their crops and settled in the Plains. According to Bonnifield, when people started to farm in this area, “They really didn’t know what they were doing.”(Source 1). The farmers contributed to the Great Plow-Up by planting wheat. “The grass, which had been there for centuries, was the organic material that knitted the soil together.” Without the grass acting as a cover for the soil, “trouble was bound to come.” (Source 1). The soil started to turn into black blizzards. “From 1932 through 1940, powerful storms ravaged the farming and grazing lands throughout the area of the Great Plains known as the dust bowl.” (Source 3). These events
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
The Dust Bowl was a major issue in the 1930's. It was caused by a major drought. It caused many farmers to lose their Cattle. Cattle was harmed or even killed by inhaling the hazardous dust particles. Due to this incident, about 60 percent of the whole population left. Some of the states that were in the Dust Bowl include, Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. Many people just left because of the fact that it was nearly impossible to live there.
Natural Disasters have always been a major part of history. The disasters have helped shape history as we know it today. The influence of these disasters also can’t be ignored. One such disaster that left its mark on history was the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was a period in the 30s in which severe dust storms swept across Southern plains of the United States (Dust Bowl). The Dust Bowl got its name when it first appeared in a newspaper article on April 15, 1935 (Shum). The Dust Bowl occurred due to widespread drought in the region and severe erosion (Long 1). The drought and violent winds caused widespread crop failure and the discouraged farmers did not practice proper erosion prevention measures (Long 1). The Storm engulfed the plains in a
The Dust Bowl was a huge impact on the U.S. in the 1930’s, it was also called the dirty thirties. It took place right after the stock market crashed and put many families that lived in the Great Plains out of their homes. The giant cloud of dust came from unanchored topsoil on the ground and carried it far away, and after the wind settled down, all of the dust that was carried, dropped and buried some homes and vehicles, even with families inside of them. It ruined crops and farms and damaged many homes. The storm mainly affected the states of Texas and Oklahoma, and touched the sides of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. The drought that came with the dust bowl lasted for several years but came in three different waves, 1934, 1936, and 1939 through 1940. Some regions in the high plains experienced it for as much as eight years. “The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains region devastated by drought in 1930s depression-ridden America” (History.com Staff, 2009).