In many places, the dust drifted like snow and residents had to clear it with shovels. Dust worked its way through the cracks of even well-sealed homes, leaving a coating on food, skin and furniture. Estimates range from hundreds to several thousand people. On May 11, , a massive dust storm two miles high traveled 2, miles to the East Coast, blotting out monuments such as the Statue of Liberty and the U. The worst dust storm occurred on April 14, News reports called the event Black Sunday.
A wall of blowing sand and dust started in the Oklahoma Panhandle and spread east. As many as three million tons of topsoil are estimated to have blown off the Great Plains during Black Sunday.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt established a number of measures to help alleviate the plight of poor and displaced farmers. He also addressed the environmental degradation that had led to the Dust Bowl in the first place. These programs put local farmers to work planting trees as windbreaks on farms across the Great Plains.
Roughly 2. It was one of the largest migrations in American history. Oklahoma alone lost , people to migration. Many of them, poverty-stricken, traveled west looking for work.
From to , roughly , Oklahoma migrants moved to California. Many of them lived in shantytowns and tents along irrigation ditches. Artist Alexander Hogue painted Dust Bowl landscapes. Guthrie, an Oklahoma native, left his home state with thousands of others looking for work during the Dust Bowl. Roosevelt Institute. About The Dust Bowl. English Department; University of Illinois. Dust Bowl Migration. University of California at Davis. The Great Okie Migration.
Smithsonian American Art Museum. Okie Migrations. Oklahoma Historical Society. The term Dust Bowl was coined in when an AP reporter, Robert Geiger, used it to describe the drought-affected south central United States in the aftermath of horrific dust storms.
Although it technically refers to the western third of Kansas, southeastern Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle, the northern two-thirds of the Texas Panhandle, and northeastern New Mexico, the Dust Bowl has come to symbolize the hardships of the entire nation during the s.
Due to low crop prices and high machinery costs, more submarginal lands were put into production. Farmers also started to abandon soil conservation practices. These events laid the groundwork for the severe soil erosion that would cause the Dust Bowl.
Several factors including a market crash started a period of economic downturn known as the Great Depression. The middle of the nation is in the midst of the first of four major drought episodes that would occur over the course of the next decade. Federal aid to the drought-affected states was first given in , but the first funds marked specifically for drought relief were not released until the fall of The term "Dust Bowl" was coined when an AP reporter, Robert Geiger, used it to describe the drought-affected south central United States in the aftermath of horrific dust storms.
Most areas of the country were returned to receiving near-normal rainfalls. The outbreak of World War II also helped to improve the economic situation. Another severe drought spread across the U. In the s, drought covered virtually the entire Plains for almost a decade Warrick, Many crops were damaged by deficient rainfall, high temperatures, and high winds, as well as insect infestations and dust storms that accompanied these conditions. Although records focus on other problems, the lack of precipitation would also have affected wildlife and plant life, and would have created water shortages for domestic needs.
A dust storm approaching Rolla, Kansas, May 6, Image: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Digital Archives. Although the s drought is often referred to as if it were one episode, there were at least 4 distinct drought events: —31, , , and —40 Riebsame et al. These events occurred in such rapid succession that affected regions were not able to recover adequately before another drought began.
Effects of the Plains drought sent economic and social ripples throughout the country. For example, millions of people migrated from the drought areas, often heading west, in search of work. These newcomers were often in direct competition for jobs with longer-established residents, which created conflict between the groups.
In addition, because of poverty and high unemployment, migrants added to local relief efforts, sometimes overburdening relief and health agencies. Many circumstances exacerbated the effects of the drought, among them the Great Depression and economic overexpansion before the drought, poor land management practices, and the areal extent and duration of the drought.
Warrick et al. The peculiar combination of these circumstances and the severity and areal coverage of the event played a part in making the s drought the widely accepted drought of record for the United States. To cope with and recover from the drought, people relied on ingenuity and resilience, as well as relief programs from state and federal governments.
Despite all efforts, many people were not able to make a living in drought-stricken regions and were forced to migrate to other areas in search of a new livelihood. It is not possible to count all the costs associated with the s drought, but one estimate by Warrick et al. Fortunately, the lessons learned from this drought were used to reduce the vulnerability of the regions to future droughts. In the early s, farmers saw several opportunities for increasing their production.
New technology and crop varieties were reducing the time and costs-per-acre of farming, which provided a great incentive for agricultural expansion. This expansion was also necessary to pay for expensive, newly developed equipment such as listers and plows that was often purchased on credit, and to offset low crop prices after World War I. When the national economy went into decline in the late s because of the Great Depression, agriculture was even more adversely affected.
In addition, a record wheat crop in sent crop prices even lower. 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.
When drought began in the early s, it worsened these poor economic conditions. The depression and drought hit farmers on the Great Plains the hardest.
Many of these farmers were forced to seek government assistance. However, even with government help, many farmers could not maintain their operations and were forced to leave their land. Some voluntarily deeded their farms to creditors, others faced foreclosure by banks, and still others had to leave temporarily to search for work to provide for their families.
In fact, at the peak of farm transfers in —34, nearly 1 in 10 farms changed possession, with half of those being involuntary from a combination of the depression and drought. Farm family, Sargent, Nebraska, Photograph by Solomon D. A number of poor land management practices in the Great Plains region increased the vulnerability of the area before the s drought. 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 years earlier.
Additionally, between and many more programs and agencies were introduced specifically to help people affected by the Dust Bowl, including efforts like the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, the Resettlement Administration, the Farm Security Administration, the Land Utilization Program and the Drought Relief Service.
The WPA was a work relief program that employed more than 8. The SCS now the Natural Resources Conservation Service promoted healthy soil management and farming practices, and paid farmers to put such practices to work on their farms. The legacy of the Service's practices such as irrigation, crop diversity and no-till farming continue in the Plains today. About 90 percent of the million hectares of arid land in North America suffers from moderate to severe desertification [source: Center for International Earth Science Information Network ].
Sustainable agriculture and soil conservation practices could help avoid another dust bowl, but experts aren't sure that such measures will be enough if extended and severe drought revisits the Great Plains. Tilling is a method of turning over the top layer of soil to remove weeds and add fertilizers and pesticides. But tilling also allows carbon dioxide, an important soil nutrient, to escape from the topsoil. No-till is a sustainable farming method that helps nutrients stay put. Organic matter, such as crop residue, remains at the surface -- healthy topsoil is fertile and decreases water runoff and erosion.
Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Environmental Science. Green Science. What caused the Dust Bowl? A giant dust storm blacks out the sky of Goodwell, Okla. Effects of the Dust Bowl " ". A father and son are slowed by a dust storm in their walk toward a shack.
No-till Farming. The dust bowl was a result of various agricultural and economic factors that brought about changes in the weather in the Southern Plains area of the United States in the s.
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