HONOR CODE PLEDGE: __________________________________ BLOCK: ______ DATE: _____________
THE DUST BOWL
Read the passages below and study the map inset on page 788 -789 to answer the questions below.
A yellow and brown haze descended on the Southern portion of the Great Plains when the wind blew up
from the South. When the wind shifted directions and swirled around from the North, the storms
turned pitch black. Even the most basic human functions were paralyzed – it was impossible to breath,
food was covered in grubby dust, work and exercise were impossible. In public, schoolchildren and
pedestrians had to wear masks. Every door and window was reinforced by bed sheets and wet towels
to keep the dust out. Once fertile fields dried up, crops withered away, crackled to pieces, and
disappeared. Farmers watched helplessly as the environment which had sustained them for years
turned violently against them.
The Dust Bowl of the 1930s lasted for close to ten years. Drought, soil erosion, and plague-like wind
storms caused ecological devastation across a broad stretch of the Middle West. The worst hit regions
were the southern Plains – where men and women were forced to emigrate from the region, and many
lost their lives in the process. Northern regions, From Nebraska to Montana and the Dakotas, were not
as horribly afflicted; nevertheless, they experienced drought, windblown dust, and agricultural decline
that made their livelihoods questionable. The agricultural devastation experience in the Northern and
Southern Plains lengthened the effects of the Depression worldwide, and devastated communities.
John Steinbeck described the somber exodus in his 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath.
“…the dispossessed were drawn west – from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico;
From Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads,
caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand
and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless, restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do – to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to
cut – anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to
live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land.”
Poor agricultural practices during the late 1800s and early 1900s – often a result of new technologies
like the steel plow and the tractor – coupled with sustained droughts and even plagues of grasshoppers
had caused the Dust Bowl. Grasslands and sod had been deeply plowed and torn over to plant grains
and wheat. When adequate rainfall came, crops were bountiful. But when the more regular
Southwestern climate resumed – droughts deepening, irrigation ditches running dry – farmers
continued to plow away the land to their detriment. The ground cover that had formerly held the soil in
place was loosened, and when the winds of the Great Plains whipped across the fields, billowing clouds
of dust ascended into the sky. A severe dust storm could darken the sky for days, and the silt and grime
which saturated the air would infest even the best sealed homes. A thick layer of dust settled on the
floors and atop the furniture. In some regions, the dust would drift like snow- covering barnyards and
farmhouses.
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE DUST BOWL. Your textbooks, pages 788-789, offer some of the answers to
these questions.
1. Study the map on page 788 of your textbook. List at least nine (9) states which suffered severe wind
erosion as a result of the Dust Bowl wind storms of the 1930s.
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2. According to the passage you just read and the information in the text, list at least three (3) ways that
the Dust Bowl disrupted the daily activities of Midwesterners in the 1930s.
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3. What novel did John Steinbeck write about the Dust Bowl’s impact on America? What was the
pejorative label given to families who emigrated from the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl? (p. 786)
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4. List at least two (2) causes of the Dust Bowl.
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5. List at least five (5) consequences of the Dust Bowl for the men and women who lived in the
Midwest, the environment, or the economy of the United States.
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6. Study the map on the first page of this activity. Which states were the most heavily damaged,
according to the map? There should be at least five (5) answers.
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7. Describe the routes taken by migrants trying to escape the Dust Bowl’s impacts. Where did many of
these families and workers end up? What do you think they went West for? Were they likely to be
successful? Why or why not? Explain your answers.
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