The Dust Storm In The 1930's

1048 Words3 Pages

In the early 1920’s a series of unfortunate events contributed to the Dust Bowl. The first few contributions were drought and strong winds. Soon dust storms started sprouting up around the midwest. As the amount of storms increased more citizens scrambled away. Turning the midwestern areas into the Dust Bowl. And to top it off all of this was happening at the beginning of the Great Depression, which began in 1929. Which was mostly caused by multiple stocks crashing. Causing great ecological and economical misery for everyone. Leading the oakies towards the coast of California. The Dust Bowl got its’ name from an article after a record storm, “The day after Black Sunday, an Associated Press reporter used the term ‘Dust Bowl’ for the first …show more content…

Not only were there many storms throughout the years, they were also very intense, “By April 1935, there had been weeks of dust storms, but the cloud that appeared on the horizon that Sunday was the worst. Winds were clocked at 60 mph” (Black Sunday.) Sometimes the storms were so bad schools either kept the children overnight or sent them home early. “During the Depression, schools across the Plains sent students home because of the dust storms. Some school administrators were worried about what might happen to the students' health. There had been cases of ‘dust pneumonia’ where dust clogged up the lungs just like the disease. Other administrators and teachers, especially in the southern Plains, knew that people had gotten lost in dust storms when visibility went to zero” (Schrute.) Even residents were afraid of the storms, “One afternoon when my dad awakened from a nap he called out, ‘I’m blind, I’m blind.’ It was black all around because another storm had hit as he slept. When it was like that and we lit a lamp at one end of the room, it was only a blur from the other end, because of all the silt in the air” (Franz.) These conditions added with dust pneumonia and low income practically forced the okies out of the

Show More
Related

  • Lauren Tarshis's A Sound Of Thunder

    686 Words  | 2 Pages

    The farmers had torn out millions of miles of prairie grass so that they could farm there. Without the grass, dust began to kick up and storm around the air causing dust storms.

    Read More

  • Joel H. Silbey's Storm Over Texas

    566 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book Storm Over Texas, by Joel H. Silbey the critical controversy of North vs. South is displayed. The book goes into great detail of the wild moments leading into the Civil War, the political dysfunction that ran throughout Texas, and many reasons the American Civil War sparked up in the first place. This book truly captives great Texas history and has valid information and points of our states different point of views on history.

    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 and 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” is referring to a time during the 1930’s where the Great Plains region was drastically devastated by drought. All of the including 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. Therefore it was easy for the

    Read More

  • American History: The Stormy Weather and Over and Well: 1930-1941

    1058 Words  | 3 Pages

    The thirties were a time of the Great Depression. Everyone was poor. People who had had riches in abundance not one year earlier were living on the streets. It would take years for America to recover, and the road to get there was not very smooth.

    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

    Natural conditions contributed to the cause of the Dust Bowl. During the year of 1936, North America was dealt an extreme amount of unusual weather, from droughts and high temperatures to record breaking cold temperatures and snow.... ... middle of paper ... ... Weather conditions, crop prices, and government policies were all factors in the Dust Bowl.

    Read More

  • President Herbert Hoover As The Cause Of The Great Depression

    733 Words  | 2 Pages

    Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas were all victims. They suffered for hours on end of dust blowing through the air into their eyes, mouths and noses. Life could not survive the dustbowl either. Trees were once planted in hopes of collecting the dust, but instead the trees sucked all the water out of the ground. Making the dust even worse. Many tried to leave and find land elsewhere but nobody wanted them there because of low amounts of money.

    Read More

  • The Super Tornado Outbreak of 1974

    729 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to Webster’s Dictionary, a tornado is a rotating column of air accompanied by a funnel shaped downward extension of a cumulonimbus cloud and having a vortex several hundred yards in diameter whirling destructively at speeds of up to three hundred miles per hour. There are six classifications of tornadoes, which are measured on what is known as the Fujita Scale. These tornadoes range from an F0 to an F5, which is the most devastating of all. Abnormal warm, humid, and oppressive weather usually precede the formation of a tornado. Records of American tornadoes date back to 1804 and have been known to occur in every state of the United States.

    Read More

  • The Worst Hard Time Timothy Egan Analysis

    957 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many believe the Dust Bowl was caused solely by bad weather, but Egan shows a multitude of factors that led to the catastrophe. In Timothy Egan’s book, The Worst Hard Time, Egan believes that the syndicate and government, overproduction of the land, and drought were all factors that caused the Dust Bowl.

    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

    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 all factors that help explain The Dust Bowl.

    Read More

  • Dust Bowl Odyssey Essay

    1061 Words  | 3 Pages

    He will maintain that the criterion of right interpretation is its own suitability to some present purpose (Carr, 1961, p. 31). A number of prejudices, assumptions, and beliefs contributed to not seeing the bigger picture. The wisdom of the time suggested that the Dust Bowl affected all of Oklahoma. Removing that assumption and looking at the facts, it shows that the affected area was the panhandle of Oklahoma.

    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

More about The Dust Storm In The 1930's

Open Document