The Dust Bowl 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
answers.com, a dust bowl is a region reduced to aridity by drought and dust storms. The best-known dust bowl is doubtless the one that hit the United States between 1933 and 1939. 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. The Dust Bowl affected the Great
Dust is deadly. During the 1930’s, many citizens were exposed to dust pneumonia. Black blizzards lasted throughout the Dirty Thirties. Around seven thousand people died. Intense dust storms ruined prairies. This event is known as the Dust Bowl. 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
are living in the Great Plains during the 1930s. You walk outside and see a blizzard of dust. For miles, everything forms a dry wasteland. What you just imagined was the Dust Bowl, an extremely harsh time for farmers in the Great Depression. During this time, the Dust Bowl resulted in harsh natural complications, poor soil, and seemingly endless dust, all of which made farming nearly impossible. The Dust Bowl brought merciless forces of nature that were harsh on farms everywhere. According to Claudia
all time low during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The stock market had crashed and a severe drought turned into a disastrous storm. The 1930 's effected the nation and nobody knew the answer to the million dollar question, what caused Americas downfall? Historians have tried hard to solve the impossible puzzle and many have their theories, but the exact cause of the Dust Bowl continues to be unknown. At the core of understanding the Dust Bowl is the question of whose fault it was. Was it the
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
course of our history. The Ice Age engendered a mass extinction of the human population, forcing the early Homo Sapiens to migrate into suitable regions and drastically changing the livelihood of mankind in 70,000 BC (NPR). Likewise, the Dust Bowl, a period of severe dust storms that damaged the prairie lands of the Great Plain between 1934 and 1937, greatly influenced the livelihood of the American citizens in the 1930s. It mainly affected the states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico
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. First of all, living conditions were by far the worst. Dust would wander into food that was cooking
history of the United States, never before was there a longer period of dust storms to occur as The Dust Bowl, most commonly known as “the dirty thirties.” The Dust Bowl affected farmers in parts of the United States and Canada, but it was most commonly found in the Southwest/Midwest. Unlike other severe catastrophes which caused damage to ones ecology and agriculture, “Georg Borgstrom, has ranked the creation of the Dust Bowl as one of the three worst ecological blunders in history” (Worster 4) due
One has not experienced the life of living in dirt until he has been in the dust bowl. It was a decade-long dust storm that impacted hundreds of farmers and their farmlands. Hardship was among one of the influences of the storm, which affected both farm workers and city folks. The storm also brought the elements of destruction and darkness, which reigned chaos across the Plains. Together, these issues gave the storm its popular name, “black blizzard” (Documentary, 2014). Such a name was given due
Imagine, sitting in your house when a cloud of suffocating dust fumes in to your home. You have nothing left to do but sit there and breath in the toxicated air, you're in the middle of a dust storm, that's exactly what happened in 1930. In the 1930s giant storms of dust would cover the plains. The series of dust storms was known as the Dust Bowl. We have both mankind and nature to thank for the heavy clouds of dust. Since new farming technology had taken over the traditional way of farming, farmers
though only the wealthy would thrive, and for some, that was true. Most thought that this situation could not get much worse. In the early 1930’s,what was said to be the worst man made disaster came into play. Dust Bowl, noun, an area of land where vegetation has been lost and soil reduced to dust and eroded, especially as a consequence of drought or unsuitable farming practice. When this calamity struck Oklahoma, an already failing state, people believed that fate had once again eluded them. No one
History 226 Final IDs 1. 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
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 by such a destructive drought as the Dust Bowl, if not a worse one that would leave us with
The Dust Bowl was also known as the “Dirty Thirties” which took its toll (Dunn n. pag.). The decade from the Dust Bowl was filled with extreme conditions such as tornadoes, floods, droughts, and dirt storms. The Dust Bowl occurred in the midwestern states of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. Within these states the conditions affected many peoples lives. The Dust Bowl had gotten its name after Black Sunday, April 14,1935( Ganzel n. pag.). While traveling through the midwest a reporter
Imagine dust surrounding the entire atmosphere, clouding everything that can be seen. Now image that dust being endless with no water in sight. Farming is one of America’s most important industries, however greed can make it one of the most dangerous. The Dust Bowl was caused by the ignorance and greed of men that caused a change in the lives of thousands. The Great Plains are a flat landscape of land throughout the Western United States that receives little rainfall and ample amounts of harsh sunlight
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
The Dust Bowl The Dust Bowl, have you heard of it? The Dust Bowl time period was also known as The Dirty Thirties. What was the Dust Bowl, and where did it come from, how long did it last, what type of things happened to life, what is the Soil Conversation Group, and why is it important to conserve soil? The Dust Bowl was a huge cloud that swept over states in the 1930’s. The clouds were full of dirt/dust and debris. The Dust Bowl was one of the worst things to happen in American History. It was
The “Dust Bowl Odyssey” presented an initial perspective of why families migrated from drought-ridden, Dust Bowl, areas to California. Edward Carr cautions, “Interpretation plays a necessary part in establishing the facts of history, and because no existing interpretation is wholly objective, on interpretation is a good as another, and the facts of history are in principle not amendable to objective interpretation” (Carr, 1961, p. 31). Historians had to separate the prejudices, assumptions, and
In the book Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s the author, Donald Worster, makes the argument that the Dust Bowl was a mostly a direct result of farmer’s methods and misuse of the fragile plains environment. However, there were many other largely contributing factors to the Dust Bowl. While the farmer’s methods played a role, other factors such as economic decline, unusually high temperatures, an extended drought accompanied by and economic depression, and the resulting wind erosion were