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The Dust Bowl was a devastating period
of weather extremes and artificially
eroded soils resulting in terrible dust
storms coupled with alternating drought
and heat with blizzards and floods.
It was a terrible time for the folks in the
United States' Great Plains when a
seemingly endless drought followed
excessive plowing of the soil and caused the
earth to let loose it's hold on it's very skin.
The stripped red soil boiled up into the air,
infiltrating every crevice it could find,
inanimate or alive.
The Great Depression
People were already hurting just about as
badly as they could bear because of the
devastating Great Depression brought on by
a huge stock market crash in 1929. Now
everything looked hopeless, and for many it
was. The 1930s started out well enough for
the Great Plains residents, but it wasn't long
until the decade was named "the Dirty
Thirties" by Midwesterners crazed from
extremes of blizzards and tornadoes, floods
and droughts.
The Dream
Wheat was a treasure crop in the 1920s.
With more and more farmers owning
tractors and combines they were seeing
greater yields and profits than ever before.
As a result they planted more wheat, and
still more wheat. They expected the world
market to continue buying it up as they had
in the first few years of rapid production.
1931 saw record wheat yields and profits.
Things were looking good.
The Market Glut
The market became glutted with wheat and
prices plummeted in July of 1931. Farmers
who made 68 cents a bushel in July 1930
made scarcely 25 cents a bushel a year later.
Many farmers went broke and abandoned
their fields all across the region. Throughout
the decade people would be starved out of
their homes. John Steinbeck's heart rending
novel, "The Grapes Of Wrath" was
published in 1939 and offers a vivid
description of this desperate time.
The Ruined Land
The other part of the problem was that the
grasslands were considered worthless and were
plowed under so that farmers could grow rich
off of wheat. But it turned out that the roots of
those scrappy dried out plains grasses were all
that was holding the earth together. Without
their established root systems firm in the soil,
the fierce Midwestern winds blew the dirt right
out of the ground. More and more farmers
deserted the region, unable to carry on.
The Dust Bowl was a devastating period of
weather extremes and artificially eroded soils
resulting in terrible dust storms coupled with
alternating drought and heat with blizzards and
floods.
"And then the dispossessed were drawn westfrom 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." John Steinbeck, "The
Grapes Of Wrath".
It was a terrible time for the folks in the United
States' Great Plains when a seemingly endless
drought followed excessive plowing of the soil
and caused the earth to let loose it's hold on it's
very skin. The stripped red soil boiled up into
the air, infiltrating every crevice it could find,
inanimate or alive.
The Great Depression
People were already hurting just about as badly
as they could bear because of the devastating
Great Depression brought on by a huge stock
market crash in 1929. Now everything looked
hopeless, and for many it was. The 1930s
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started out well enough for the Great Plains
residents, but it wasn't long until the decade
was named "the Dirty Thirties" by
Midwesterners crazed from extremes of
blizzards and tornadoes, floods and droughts.
up and dumped tons of water on the plains,
washing people out of their homesteads. As
soon as it got through raining, the dirt blew in,
ruining buildings and granaries. When all that
damage was done, the blizzards tore down from
the north, freezing property, bodies and spirits.
The Dream
Dust Storms
Wheat was a treasure crop in the 1920s. With
more and more farmers owning tractors and
combines they were seeing greater yields and
profits than ever before. As a result they
planted more wheat, and still more wheat. They
expected the world market to continue buying
it up as they had in the first few years of rapid
production. 1931 saw record wheat yields and
profits. Things were looking good.
The Market Glut
The market became glutted with wheat and
prices plummeted in July of 1931. Farmers who
made 68 cents a bushel in July 1930 made
scarcely 25 cents a bushel a year later. Many
farmers went broke and abandoned their fields
all across the region. Throughout the decade
people would be starved out of their homes.
John Steinbeck's heart rending novel, "The
Grapes Of Wrath" was published in 1939 and
offers a vivid description of this desperate time.
The Ruined Land
The other part of the problem was that the
grasslands were considered worthless and were
plowed under so that farmers could grow rich
off of wheat. But it turned out that the roots of
those scrappy dried out plains grasses were all
that was holding the earth together. Without
their established root systems firm in the soil,
the fierce Midwestern winds blew the dirt right
out of the ground. More and more farmers
deserted the region, unable to carry on.
The Weather
As fate would have it, the weather turned crazy
on the farmers that remained. The skies opened
Each summer in the early 1930s brought more
drought to the region. The heartless winds
would fling dirt into drifts several feet high
against anything that stood in its path. The
insides of houses were nearly as full of dirt as
the outsides. Opening the windows to let in air
to relieve the oppressive heat invited more dirt
than already managed to creep in on its own
through any unguarded crevice. People
crammed every cranny with scraps of cloth and
paper, trying, and failing, to keep out the
relentless dirt. They tied dampened bandanas
over their mouths and noses and wore goggles
if they had to go out of doors. They flapped wet
gunny sacks through the air indoors to try to
settle the dirt so that they could breathe.
Outdoors fences, tractors and walls were buried
and hidden beneath drifts of dirt. Livestock
suffered and died.
The Crops
In 1932 the ground was too rock hard from the
drought to anyone plant their crops until
September. Then came an early frost. The
resultant crops were still spindly and small by
the time the hard spring freezes came about. 22
days of dirt storms devastated much of that
sorry yield. 1933 started with a devastating dirt
storm which did in most of the remaining
wheat, such as it was.
In early February the temperature plunged 74
degrees in just 18 hours in Boise City,
Oklahoma. Temperatures stayed below freezing
for a few days and broke just in time for yet
another dirt storm. Records show 139 days of
dust and drought in 1933.
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Tenacity
Aftermath
A tenacious core of Plains farmers held on and
farmed the way their fathers had farmed a
generation earlier when these were frontier
lands. When the wheat failed, they harvested
thistle or soap weed to feed the livestock, and
sometimes themselves. It was desperately hard
work with no reward beyond knowing they'd
done a hard job.
Finally toward the end of the thirties, the
unprecedented weather extremes and tornados
subsided. The area remains harsh but those
years of the 1930s were excessive.
In 1934 the Dust Bowl got the notice of the rest
of the country when a dust storm blew all the
way from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas to
Washington DC and New York. There were
fewer tornadoes that year than the year before,
but now they got record setting ladders of heat
that killed hundreds of people in Oklahoma,
Kansas, Texas and Colorado.
Black Sunday
In 1935, on a Sunday that started out fine and
glorious, there came a frantic fleeing of birds
who could not out fly a dense, dark cloud of dirt
that soon overwhelmed the landscape. This, the
worst storm yet, earned that day the name
"Black Sunday". By now all those who could not
take the pressure had either moved far away
from this heartbreaking land, or died in it. On
this bleak Sunday, many of the people who had
managed to survive so far believed the end of
the world was at hand. For hours they were
trapped indoors unable to see a step ahead
through the dirt outdoors.
Earthquake
On a lovely June day in 1936 an earthquake
burst through the hard Oklahoma soil and tore
it open from Kenton to Perryton and from
Liberal to Stratford. Summer temperatures
reached 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat wave
finally broke that year, but 1937 brought more
dirt storms, and 1938 introduced the term
"snuster", meaning a blizzard of snow mixed
with dirt. Snow and dust.
In the years following the Dust Bowl, people set
about learning how to conserve and prevent
the devastation caused by the loosened soil.
Farmers now are taught how to rotate crops
and plant soil protecting plants to save the land
from another devastation like the Dust Bowl.
Subsequent droughts in the region have not
produced the devastation of the Dirty Thirties.
But a lesson once learned is a lesson best
remembered.