During this time, total population increased steadily, but there was a slight dip in trend from 1930 to 1960. The Dust Bowl | Discussion Questions | Activities | Resources. A second explanation is a lack of availability of credit, caused by the high rate of failure of banks in the Plains states. Apples, beans, canned beef, flour and pork products were distributed through local relief channels. Because of this long seige of dust and every building being filled with it, the air has become stifling to breathe and many people have developed sore throats and dust colds as a result. With the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, waves of new migrants and immigrants reached the Great Plains, and they greatly increased the acreage under cultivation. The drought came in three waves, 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... Help support true facts by becoming a member. Elevation ranges from 2,500 feet (760 m) in the east to 6,000 feet (1,800 m) at the base of the Rocky Mountains. Farmers could no longer grow crops as the land turned into a desert. That’s what really happened during the Dust Bowl. After the Great Depression ended, some moved back to their original states. The Dust Bowl got its name after dust began to form in the sky and it was a dust storm like a snow storm and it covered houses and caused a depression and people could not grow vegetables or crops and animals began to die off. Recognizing the challenge of cultivating marginal arid land, the United States government expanded on the 160 acres (65 ha) offered under the Homestead Act – granting 640 acres (260 ha) to homesteaders in western Nebraska under the Kinkaid Act (1904) and 320 acres (130 ha) elsewhere in the Great Plains under the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909. At the same time, technological improvements such as mechanized plowing and mechanized harvesting made it possible to operate larger properties without increasing labor costs. The Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s was one of the worst environmental disasters of the Twentieth Century anywhere in the world. Dust Bowl and the Great Depression . Last year the Nation suffered a drought of unparalleled intensity. [21] The dust clouds blew all the way to Chicago, where they deposited 12 million pounds of dust (~ 5500 tonnes). The Dust Bowl has been the subject of many cultural works, notably the novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck, the folk music of Woody Guthrie, and photographs depicting the conditions of migrants by Dorothea Lange. See some of those who lived through it, their thousand-yard stares, and the ghostly landscapes they traveled through in the Dust Bowl pictures above. [27] Dust Bowl conditions fomented an exodus of the displaced from Texas, Oklahoma, and the surrounding Great Plains to adjacent regions. [32] In just over a year, over 86,000 people migrated to California. Children of Mormon farmer at dinner. On April 14, 1935, known as "Black Sunday", 20 of the worst "black blizzards" occurred across the entire sweep of the Great Plains, from Canada south to Texas. During early European and American exploration of the Great Plains, this region was thought unsuitable for European-style agriculture; explorers called it the Great American Desert. The economic effects persisted, in part, because of farmers' failure to switch to more appropriate crops for highly eroded areas. The Dust Bowl not … Here are some interesting facts about the Dust Bowl: •In 1932, there were 14 dust storms recorded on the Plains (an area that included the panhandle of Oklahoma and Texas, southwest Kansas, southeastern Colorado, and Nebraska). The Dust Bowl refers to the series of severe dust storms that swept across the Great Plains region throughout the second half of the 1930s. [25] After much data analysis, the causal mechanism for the droughts can be linked to ocean temperature anomalies. The soil became so dry that it turned to dust. The clouds that appeared … Dust Bowl The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands in the 1930s, particularly in 1934 and 1936 The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades ", "Drought: A Paleo Perspective – 20th Century Drought", "The Black Sunday Dust Storm of 14 April 1935", "A History of Drought in Colorado: lessons learned and what lies ahead", "A Report of the Great Plains Area Drought Committee", "Northern Rockies and Plains Average Temperature – October to March", "Northern Rockies and Plains Precipitation, 1895–2013", "Texas Climate Division 1 (High Plains): Precipitation 1895–2013", "The Weather of 1941 in the United States", National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "The Enduring Impact of the American Dust Bowl: Short and Long-run Adjustments to Environmental Catastrophe", "First Measured Century: Interview:James Gregory", "Timeline: The Dust Bowl | American Experience | PBS", Drought of 1934: The Federal Government's Assistance to Agriculture, "Droughts, Floods, and Financial Distress in the United States", "Destitute Pea Pickers in California: Mother of Seven Children, Age Thirty-two, Nipomo, California. [12][13] An unusually wet period in the Great Plains mistakenly led settlers and the federal government to believe that "rain follows the plow" (a popular phrase among real estate promoters) and that the climate of the region had changed permanently. At the end of the drought, the programs which were implemented during these tough times helped to sustain a positive relationship between America's farmers and the federal government.[43]. During the Depression and through at least the 1950s, there was limited relative adjustment of farmland away from activities that became less productive in more-eroded counties. In the decade prior to the crash of 1929, the nation became polarized between rich and poor. [1][2] The drought came in three waves, 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years. President Roosevelt started the ‘Shelterbelt Project’ which proposed planting trees across the Great Plains region in hopes of preventing future erosion(‘Dust Bowl’). FDR in an address on the AAA commented. Great Depression/Dust Bowl Timeline created by chanson. These choking billows of dust – named "black blizzards" or "black rollers" – traveled cross country, reaching as far as the East Coast and striking such cities as New York City and Washington, D.C. On the plains, they often reduced visibility to 3 feet (1 m) or less. [3], With insufficient understanding of the ecology of the plains, farmers had conducted extensive deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains during the previous decade; this had displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. For the role of Tom Collins of the Farm Security Administration in Steinbeck's novel, see: John Steinbeck with Robert Demott, ed.. 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