In what was one of the most fertile areas of the United States, one of the Nation’s worst agricultural disasters occurred. No rain came so crops did not grow, leaving the soil exposed to the high winds that hit the area in the 1930s. Stretching over a 150,000 square mile area and encompassing parts of five states—these being Texas, 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 mass famine and loss of our productive crop lands.
The rich dark soil of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas, and Colorado—an area also known as the Great Plains—formed from thousands of years of soil forming factors in action (Surviving the Dust Bowl). From the beginning of human populations living in the area, the soils, for the most part, remained untouched and unscathed by the plow. Thick prairie grasses covered the area and held the soils in the ground even during the periodic times of drought. This area of land was suitable for grazing practices and it was in this area that the large cattle ranches flourished. Little did the newly arrived farmers realize that this seemingly plentiful land followed a pattern of several years of rain followed by several years of drought and high winds.
Farmers were lured to the Great Plains by the promise of rich soils as dark as chocolate and the promise of bounty....
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Francis, Randol. "The Texas Dust Bowl In Historical Perspective: What Happened and Could It Happen Again?" The Dust Bowl. June 1998. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
Ganzel, Bill. "The Dust Bowl of the 1930s." Farming in the 1930s. The Wessels Living History Farm, 2003. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
Harris, Richard. "Dust Storms Threaten Snow Packs." NPR : National Public Radio. Public Broadcasting Service, 30 May 2006. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
"Man Made Disasters Part 2: The Dust Bowl." Green Planet Ethics. 14 Nov. 2010. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
Schmaltz, Jeff. "Dust Storm over Northern Texas." Earth Observatory. NASA, 27 Feb. 2007. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
Surviving the Dust Bowl. Prod. Chana Gazit. WGBH: American Experience. Public Broadcasting Service. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
Worster, Donald. "The Dust Bowl." The Handbook of Texas. Texas State Historical Association. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
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
Farmers’ incomes were low, and in order to make a profit on what they produced, they begun to expand the regions in which they sold their products in. This was facilitated through the railroads, by which through a series of grants from the government as...
Because of westward expansion, America gained a significant amount of fertile land which contributed to the nation 's’ agrarian identity. The wilderness and landscape
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.
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 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
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.
The heart of the dust storms concentrated on the Great Plains. Five states were hit the hardest: Colorado, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. The most affected farmland was located within a 160 kilometer radius of Liberal, Kansas. But these storms also moved east. Dust was spread to Chicago, Boston, Manhattan, Philadelphia and Washington.
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.
When looking at the vast lands of Texas after the Civil War, many different people came to the lands in search for new opportunities and new wealth. Many were lured by the large area that Texas occupied for they wanted to become ranchers and cattle herders, of which there was great need for due to the large population of cows and horses. In this essay there are three different people with three different goals in the adventures on the frontier lands of Texas in its earliest days. Here we have a woman's story as she travels from Austin to Fort Davis as we see the first impressions of West Texas. Secondly, there is a very young African American who is trying his hand at being a horse rancher, which he learned from his father. Lastly we have a Mexican cowboy who tries to fight his way at being a ranch hand of a large ranching outfit.
Klein,Christopher. “10 Things You May Not Know About the Dust Bowl” History. history channel 24 August, 2012. Web. 21 nov 2013 http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-dust-bowl
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.
(Worster 105). The droughts caused many unfavorable conditions 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 in 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)
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.
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.