In the 1930s, eastern Colorado experienced the worst ecological disaster in the state’s history. Tim Egan, a New York Times reporter and best-selling author who wrote a book about the Dust Bowl called "The Worst Hard Time," described that day as one of biblical horror: More than a quarter-million people became environmental refugees—they fled the Dust Bowl during the 1930s because they no longer had the reason or courage to stay. These events occurred in such rapid succession that affected regions were not able to recover adequately before another drought began. Many of these farmers were forced to seek government assistance. Certainly not as long as I live will the curse of drouth be lifted from this country.". The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. However, it is not known how many of the remaining cases (32%) were indirectly affected by drought. This ecological and economic disaster and the region where it happened came to be known as the Dust Bowl. Revisiting the Dust Bowl: Some graphs that detail how bad the drought was. “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West. Today, farmers use no till equipment, parts, and techniques to increase crop yields and protect the soil from another potential “dust bowl” catastrophe.. During the Great Depression, millions of unemployed men became “hobos,” homeless vagrants who wandered in search of work. Many accidents and natural disasters have done serious environmental damage to the United States. In 1933, the number of dust storms climbed to 38, nearly three times as many as the year before. Dust storms also swept across the northern prairies of the United States and Canada, but the damage there couldn't compare to the devastation farther south. Baker; and W. Brinkman. https://study.com/academy/lesson/dust-bowl-facts-lesson-for-kids.html On the Southern Plains, the sky turned lethal. Ironically, the Ogallala Aquifer is not being depleted to feed American families or to support the kind of small farmers who hung on through the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl years. A dust storm approaching Rolla, Kansas, May 6, 1935. The Economics and Effects of the Dust Bowl. Of all the droughts that have occurred in the United States, the drought events of the 1930s are widely considered to be the “drought of record” for the nation. Some of the land use patterns and methods of cultivation in the region can be traced back to the settlement of the Great Plains nearly 100 years earlier. These lower prices meant that farmers needed to cultivate more acreage, including poorer farmlands, or change crop varieties to produce enough grain to meet their required equipment and farm payments. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. Affected Texas cities included Dalhart, Pampa, Spearman, and Amarillo. When droughts hit, topsoil dried up and blew away. Due to low crop prices and high machinery costs, more submarginal lands were put into production. Think of this, but imagine it a thousands times worse and you may have some idea of what it was like to This led to a return to some of the inappropriate farming and grazing practices that made many regions so vulnerable to drought in the 1930s. Follow the NDMC on social media to receive the latest information and updates about our work. Sitemap. The Dust Bowl And Hobos. Excerpt from Douglas Hurt, The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981), 15, 30. 10. Excerpt from Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plain in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 4-5. This began to change with the development of the Great Depression in the late 1920s and the 1933 inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Here are only a few of them. In his epilogue to "The Worst Hard Time," Egan writes: In the 21st century, there are new dangers facing the Southern Plains. The peculiar combination of these circumstances and the severity and areal coverage of the event played a part in making the 1930s drought the widely accepted drought of record for the United States. Although cable news and the internet weren’t around to sensationalize the prolonged event, the Great Plains, and Southern Plains were devastated by the damage. In the summer of 1931, rain stopped falling and a drought that would last for most of the decade descended on the region. Of all the droughts that have occurred in the United States, the drought events of the 1930s are widely considered to be the “drought of record” for the nation. The Dust Bowl was an area in the Midwest that suffered from drought during the 1930s and the Great Depression. How do today’s farmers care for the soil? Government Camps During the Dust Bowl. The resulting agricultural depression contributed to the Great Depression’s bank closures, business losses, increased unemployment, and other physical and emotional hardships. In the 1930s, drought covered virtually the entire Plains for almost a decade (Warrick, 1980). ThoughtCo uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. Farming submarginal lands often had negative results, such as soil erosion and nutrient leaching. Congressional actions in 1934 alone accounted for relief expenditures of $525 million (U.S. House of Representatives, 1934); the total cost (social, economic, and environmental) would be impossible to determine. The worst dust storm of all hit on April 14, 1935—a day that became known as "Black Sunday." The depression helped “soften deep-rooted, hard-line attitudes of free enterprise, individualism, and the passive role of the government”, thus paving the way for Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, which in turn provided a framework for drought relief programs for the Great Plains (Warrick, 1980). Humor helped; tales about birds flying backward to keep from getting sand in their eyes, housewives scouring pots and pans by holding them up to keyholes for a sandblasting, and children who had never seen rain were among the favorite stories of Dust Bowl inhabitants. The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American prairie lands in the 1930's. In fact, the new production demands and positive climatic conditions brought the United States into a rapid economic boom. Between 2013 and 2015, the aquifer lost 10.7 million acre-feet of storage. We've been having quite a bit of blowing dirt every year since the drought started, not only here, but all over the Great Plains. In J. Ausubel and A.K. Federal aid to the drought-affected states was first given in 1932, but the first funds marked specifically for drought relief were not released until the fall of 1933. (Image: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress LC-USZ62-16083). Talene Tse. The Dust Bowl exacerbated the effects of the Great Depression and sparked the largest American migration in the shortest amount of time. 1975. The impact of this mass migration had both positive and negative effects on California and the country as a whole. Before the 1930s drought, federal aid had generally been withheld in emergency situations in favor of individual and self-reliant approaches. Fite, G.C. Some of the worst storms blanketed the nation with dust from the Great Plains. 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