The worst man made ecological disaster in American history; The Dust Bowl. During The Great Depression, jobs, money, and food were scarce it forced the farmers to over work the soil because there was very little money and food them. So,they had to plant more crops to make ends met. But they did not realize that they were braking up the dirt creating the dust bowl. The first dust blizzard was in 1931.And there was also a drought in 1931-1939 that dried the area. It was said that it got up to 115°f. In 1939 during the fall rain came bring the end of the drought. And with the coming of world war two, pulling the country out of the great depression that made to plains golden with wheat once again. The natural weather blew the loose topsoil into …show more content…
And just slowly just came closer and closer. But in the beginning there was no sound but eventually we heard a sweeping sound a sort of accelerations the wind was picking up the earth closer and closer to us, you know. And it um as it got so close about a quarter of a mile or a half we all went in side. And that was the experience. That was the first really bad dust storm. That we remember.”.Earl V. Stager from Castro county Texas said it was completely black and it sent birds flying for safety, people and him as well feared the end of the …show more content…
In 1937 Roosevelt addressed the nation in his second inaugural address, stating, "I see one-third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. . .the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." FDR 's Shelterbelt Project begins. The project called for large-scale planting of trees across the Great Plains, stretching through a 100-mile wide zone from Canada to northern T.X, to protect the land from erosion. Native trees, such as red cedar and green ash, were planted along fence rows separating properties, & the farmers were paid to plant & cultivate them. The project was estimated to cost 75 million dollars over a period of 12 years. When disputes arose over funding sources the project was considered to be a long-term strategy, and therefore ineligible for emergency relief funds,the FDR transferred the program to the WPA, where the project had
Timothy Egan called the Dust Bowl "the worst hard times As the nation was hit with its worst economic disaster, the country was hit with its worst ecological disaster as well. Over 300 dust storms or dusters hit the Southern Great Plains during the 1930s. The hardest hit areas were theOklahoma and Texas panhandles. The land became almost uninhabitable, and over two million people left their homes throughout the course of the dust bowl in search of a new life elsewhere. Many ended up nearly starved to death and homeless.
Dust Bowl, The Southern Plains in the 30’s written by Donald Worster and published in 1979, is an informative text on the Great Plains during the Great Depression. Donald Worster is a credible author because he not only earned a Ph.D. from Yale in environmental history, but he also had previously written a book on the environment and the economy. This book was written well and Worster did a good job of revealing how people and how they live have effected the areas environment. He spoke of places including, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas and many more.
This over farming diminished the nutrients in the ground and removed all of the grass and sod holding the dirt in place which resulted in it creating the giant dust storms. Storms like this have happened in the past but not to the same degree. He mentions how the climate in the Southern Plains is problematic as there is little rain and every so many years there are big storms that tear throughout the area. The difference between the storms that occurred before the Dust Bowl, is that there was grass and sod keeping the soil in place instead of just bare earth with shallow roots for anything that managed to cover the earth. Worster claims capitalism and the farming practices are responsible for this as the farmers strive to make a profit without caring about the state of the land is in.
Have you ever imagined a world covered in a huge cloud of dust and soot - so much that you can’t even see your own hands? This is how the daily life in the Dust Bowl era felt when a giant cloud of dirt and dust rolled over an area of an affected plain state. For thousands of years, the Southern Plains were covered by shortgrass prairie. People looked to settle in the plain states in seek of better and less expensive land for farming. They ripped up a large portion of the land’s native crops and plants during the construction of housing and preparation of farmland.
Many corporations and administration acts were created as a part of the New Deal, all improving the state of disaster in the U.S. However, his greatest accomplishment of his lifetime not only was saving America from physical and mental damage from the Great Depression and the World War, but was contributing to stop the Dust Bowl. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), new farming methods and techniques (influenced by the New Deal), and the construction of the “shelter belt” introduced in 1935, where local farmers planted more than 200 million trees on almost all farms located in the dust bowl area. By doing this, overtime the Dust bowl disappeared, which “forever changed the face of America.” The stock markets and businesses were saved as restoration continued as lives of many people became more intricate but understandable.
The Dust Bowl was an event that occurred in the United States of America during the 1930’s. The Dust Bowl really affected the states of Colorado, Kansas,Texas and Oklahoma, and New Mexico. The Dust Bowl was some of the worst dust storms that has ever happened in the United States of America. The Dust Bowl severely crippled the economy of the United States because a lot of the wheat that was being used was being made is the areas that were affected the worst by the dust bowl. The worst day in the history of the dust bowl was a day called Black Sunday where the entire sky was black with dirt.
The Dust Bowl is an area that was devastated by extreme drought, soil erosion, and economic depression during the 1930’s. The worst of it struck 50 million acres , mainly in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. The Dust Bowl did a lot of destruction to farm land and caused a lot of problems for farmers. Some farmers called “suitcase farmers” are people who lived and only visited during harvesting time. About 40 big storms swept through the Dust Bowl in 1935.
Dust Bowl and Economics of the 1930s The Dust Bowl was a very desperate and troublesome time for America. The southwestern territories were in turmoil due to the arid effect of the drought causing no fertile soils. As the rest of America was being dragged along with the stock market crash and higher prices of wheat and crops since the producing areas couldn't produce. This was a streak of bad luck for the Americans as they were in a deep despair for a quite some time.
The Dust Bowl of the 1930 's caused devastation for the mid-west at the time. It went on in Oklahoma,Texas,New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas; however, slimmer areas were actually affected by the Dust Bowl like the Oklahoma panhandle, the Texas panhandle, the Northeast of New Mexico, the Southeast of Colorado, and the western third of Kansas. The drought that caused the Dust Bowl affected about 27 states and covered about 75% of the country. It was in April of 1934 that Black Sunday, the worst storm of the Dust Bowl, occurred. Shortly after President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed the Conservation Act.
Dust storms in the Dust Bowl area wreaked havoc on the Great Plains and Southwestern United States and caused the death of many. Once upon a time (The 1930’s to be exact), there was a bright young fellow named Bob. His family consisted of six people: Bob, June (his sister), Billy (his one year-old brother who was very sick), his older brother (Eric), Bob’s dad, and Bob’s mom. They lived in a rural area of Oklahoma. In the “Dirty Thirties,” their lives changed drastically.
The dust bowl was considered the “Worst hard time” in american history. The Dust Bowl was a big cloud of dust that took place during the 1930’s in the middle of the Great Depression. The dust bowl was located in the southern great plains as it affected states like Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. The three main causes of the Dust Bowl were drought (Doc E), amount of land being harvest (Doc D), and the death shortgrass prairie (Doc C).
Also because the tractor was so good they could now plow land that before was so difficult to plow. Now there is a huge amount of land, being over worked. Then when The Great War ends there is a huge amount of land left alone. They did not put the grass back to hold the earth together. Then the winds came and created these huge dust storms caused by these huge amounts of grassless land.
Nature’s delicate balance of wind, rain, and grass had been disturbed by human settlement. Fifty years earlier, a strong protective carpet of grass had covered the Great Plains. The grass held moisture in the soil and kept the soil from blowing away (Holley).” Before the Great Plains were settled, its geography was covered in lush grasses that made it perfect for farming and raising livestock. As the population grew and more and more people settled there, the grass was removed so that they could farm the land.
John Wesley Powell, the great Western explorer determined that “20 inches of rain annually was the minimum for a successful farming on the plains.” A graph from Baylor University, shows that nine out of ten of the years from 1931-1940 were below the required minimum And the one year that met the bar, got 20.09 inches of rain, so it was barely there. This lack of rain greatly added to the perfect conditions for dust storms that we saw in the 1930’s. To sum it all up, the 30’s were a perfect time for dust storms to grow and plague America.
The dust storms of the 1930s forced farmers and the federal government to utilize all of the technical expertise and financial resources they could command to bring the wind erosion problem under control. When drought and dust storms returned to the region during the 1950s, the technology and conservation practices that Dust Bowl farmers had been using for twenty years prevented the region from reverting to the severe conditions of the