The United States is a nation that has faced many catastrophic events throughout its history. After the stock market crash of 1929, America’s economy began to fall apart and many people lost their jobs. Because of this, the need for food was at an all-time high and people began to plant extra crops to feed the starving nation. The overproduction of crops and drought created dust storms, and eventually The Dust Bowl. In 1934, The Dust Bowl began, damaging the entire Great Plains region and destroying the majority of the country’s crops. The drought first destroyed the land of the midwest, and then the people, forcing them to pack their bags and leave their homes, or stay and starve to death. The Great Depression and natural disasters completely devastated The Great Plains.
The first major change in the life of people on The Great Plains was the destruction of soil and land due to over-planting and drought. The number of farms had grown to over 800,000 by 1900 and to 1.2 million by 1930 (Wunder, Kaye, and Carstensen 304). After the number of farms in the midwest increased, there were many dry years to follow. In fact, every year after 1930 was drier than the previous year, and 1934 was one of the driest on record (McGovern 18). The situation in the Great Plains region continued to worsen. A single storm would remove several inches of soil, first the loam and fine sand, then the coarse sand. Finally, the wind would remove all the soil leaving only the bottom layer and creating true desert conditions (Chase 113). It was estimated that 350 million tons of topsoil from North and South Dakota flew into the air. Chicago investigators at the time also estimated that 300 million tons of dust, which used to be topsoil from Missouri and the ...
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...d to have been aggravated by the dust laden air. In the more seriously affected areas, the dust lay from a few inches to more than 6 feet deep, and considerable livestock perished from starvation and suffocation. (Wunder, Kaye, and Carstensen 82)
To add to this, Collins and Hill quote the Public Health service in America's Own Refugees: Our 4,000,000 Homeless Migrants: "The dust . . . in our opinion was a definite contributory factor in the development of untold numbers of acute infections and materially increased the number of deaths from pneumonia and other complications" (73).
The Dust Bowl affected The Great Plains in many different ways. The drought and the plagues of bugs were a big part of this. Many people were left without crops or farms, and had to move. Overcoming these events, the United States of America once again proved its strength and prosperity.
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.
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.
In the 1930's, farmers in the Great Plains region began deep plowing and destroyed the top soil and natural grasses so that they would be picked up in the wind (Boundless.com 1) The Great Plains area consists of parts of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. Also a combination of a long drought and high winds led to dust storms creating the dust bowl that affected many people. Dust storms are giant clouds of dust that are thrown into the air and gathered into clouds that flew violently across the Great Plains. One expert describes one of these dust storms saying, “One of the most frightening days during the decade of the Dust Bowl is referred to as Black Sunday. On April 14, 1935, what started out as a clear sunny day suddenly transformed into a giant black cloud on the horizon — a huge dust storm. Residents fled their morning chores and sought cover in cars, houses, and shelters before they would be blinded and en...
The dust bowl over all of the time it had lasted affected over 100,00,000 acres of land!("Dust Bowl Facts")This is very important because that means that it had a very negative effect on people's crops so some of them starve to death and this
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.
Natural conditions contributed to the cause of the Dust Bowl. During the year of 1936, North America was dealt an extreme am...
The “Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s”, was written by Donald Worster, who admits wanted to write the book for selfish reasons, so that he would have a reason o visit the Southern Plains again. In the book he discusses the events of the “dirty thirties” in the Dust Bowl region and how it affected other areas in America. “Dust Bowl” was a term coined by a journalist and used to describe the area that was in the southern planes in the states of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, between the years of 1931 and 1939. This area experienced massive dust storms, which left dust covering everything in its wake. These dust storms were so severe at times that it made it so that the visibility in the area was so low to where people
The drought in this region caused many forest fires that ultimately destroyed wildlife surrounding the crops. This created favourable conditions for insects to migrate and live in. Some of the insects, such as locusts, had intruded upon the once lush, and prosperous harvest spaces, and left only dried straw and grass behind . It was assumed that by mid 1930’s, the Prairies’ agricultural practices would change drastically. Consequently, the poor harvesting conditions resulted in farmers moving their families and practices elsewhere. Many farmers moved to the northern regions of Canada, either picking up where they left off in the agricultural industry or shifting careers completely and moving into the bush clearing business. Those who were not able to obtain a job or adapt to the conditions were left unemployed. Within the time span of one decade, it was evident that a massive economic shift had occurred in the Prairie Provinces. Almost 200,000 individuals relocated themselves from the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, which greatly impacted the net population, the economy, and the lives of many Canadians . These severe impacts that were caused by the “dust bowl” in the Prairies left the Grain industry of Canada in a critical condition. Since the growing conditions of the Prairies proved to be unbearable for crops and humans alike, Canada’s grain
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 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
The area of severe wind erosion, soon known as the Dust Bowl, compromised a section of the wheat belt near the intersection of Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. ”(Gregory, 11). Along with Gregory, John Steinbeck in his book, The Harvest Gypsies, and Debra Weber in her book, Dark Sweat, White Gold, also write about these events, and in particular the people who were affected by it. The Dust Bowl had ruined any chance of farmers in those regions being able to farm, because of that they were forced to relocate to be able to survive.
covers the area, causing people, animals, and structures to practically disintegrate. Even years afterwards people were still dying and having
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,
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.
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.