A majority fled to other regions to get completely away from the harsh dust storms, except some farmers stayed and decided to fight through the issues and come out on top. Not only did land and crops get ruined, but people's homes and belongings did also. Living during the time period of the Dust Bowl was harsh and to make it even worse people also were suffering from the Great Depression. The Federal Government was a big contribution to solving the issues with the Dust Bowl, they took control and came up with New Deal agencies that farmers were able to improve from and learn new methods with plowing to sustain their lands. There ended up being some positive outcomes of the harsh disaster. Farmers who chose to stay back eventually found new technologies and methods for farming that somewhat helped the situation. If another Dust Bowl, even though farmers would not be able to control the winds, they would still be able to use these methods and greatly increase the odds of less
To begin the dust bowl lasted for many years. To follow, Farmers plowed fields when there was no water and dried up the land, the crops took all the water, and the drought killed crops. Furthermore, One-third of people lived on farms, they were being kicked of the land because WW1 made the prices fall, and raised how many crops were made. 2.5 million Had to leave their home and their whole family couldn’t leave
Donald Worster is an environmental historian and his book Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s helped to define the environmental history movement as it was the first environmental history book published. He breaks the stereotype of how the Dust Bowl was viewed by writing it from an environmental standpoint instead of writing a social history by focusing solely on the people and their experiences. How it helped to define the environmental history movement is that it opened up this avenue for others to write about environmental issues. He is also an anti-capitalist and this book combines his interest in the environment with the effect that capitalism has on the environment.
The 1930s was a defining decade in America's history it was a test of the nation's strength and resulted in many changes, both good and bad. One of the many challenges America faced was the disastrous dust storms in the southern Great Plains. In the years before the dust storms began, farmers cleared the land of the grass in order to plant wheat when the drought came the wheat failed, resulting the Dust Bowl ("Dust Bowl 1931-1939" 3). These storms caused the greatest migration in U.S. history, with about 2.5 million farmers and their families leaving the plains ("Dust Bowl 1931-1939" 3). The Dust Bowl was an enormous struggle that resulted in many economic and agricultural problems that were going to be extremely strenuous to fix. Because
The dust bowl was caused by severe drought,bad farming and change of weather.During the 1930’s,severe drought,failure to know how to farm and to prevent wind erosions,the aeolian processes.The impact this disaster had on the society was scared,because people didn’t know if they were going to make it.Another impact this horrific disaster had on the society was all of their crops were destroyed. the society was scared that the dust would never stop.
The three main causes of the Dust Bowl was Drought, amount of land being harvested on, and death of the shortgrass prairie. All of these reasons have to tie in with soil and water. The Dust Bowl was truly the Worst Hard Time in American history. It affected the great plains of america forever and would go down in
Another cause of the dust bowl is drought. According to document E, In the 1930’s there were nine years of below average rainfall. The average rainfall is 20 inches. The average annual rainfall of the five dust bowl towns was 17 inches. Those three inches made a drought possible.
During the Great Depression a Midwestern phenomenon called the Dust Bowl affected many lives of newly settled Americans throughout the Great Plains region. Otherwise known as the “Dirty Thirties”, a storm of dry weather caused farmers and villagers to abandon their homes in hope to survive the deadly threat of the storm. The Dust Bowl was a big contributing factor to the Great Depression agriculturally, and economically.
The dust bowl was of the most devastating environmental disaster in the US history. The drought and poor farming practice lead cause this tragedy. The dust transformed the landscape of the Great Plains and also transformed our relationship with the
First, changes in farming and agriculture over the years led to the conditions that caused the Dust Bowl and impacted the Great Plains. “Wind and drought alone did not create the Dust Bowl. 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. Now the grass that held the water that kept the soil in-place
During the Dust Bowl some people made the decision to stay at their farms. Huge drifts of dirt piled up on homesteaders’ doors, came in the cracks of windows and came down from the ceilings. Barnyards and pastures were buried in dirt. After about 850 million tons of topsoil was blown away in 1935 alone. The government responded to this by saying “Unless something is done, the western plains will be as arid as the Arabian desert.”
The poor farming practices that were put in place by profit farmers disregarding the state of the land coupled with the sudden explosive growth in farming technology allowing these farmers to farm much larger plots of land with much more ease left the topsoil completely vulnerable. While it was natural phenomena that sparked the Dust Bowl, it was not the cause, as these natural phenomena on their own would not have been nearly enough to cause anything on the scale of the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was a direct causation of the poor farming methods of the farmers of the
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The Dust Bowl was caused by the persistent dry weather which caused the crops to fail, leaving the fields exposed to wind erosion. So when the wind blew it would cause enormous clouds of dust. Farmers also caused the Dust Bowl by them plowing over 5.2 million acres of deep-rooted grass which kept the soil rich. It first affected the states of Texas and Oklahoma and then moved on to parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas(“Dust Bowl”).
In the book, The Worst Hard Times, author Timothy Egan explains the hard times that the families in the high plains experienced during the years near the Great Depression. Egan writes about "The Great American Dust Bowl" which originally was a place of lushes thick grass where the bison could graze and where the Indians in the area could hunt, until Texas cowboys took over the land for big cattle drives making the area a huge ranch. During the years that these cowboys worked the land, they noticed that before they started the cattle runs, the grass that was in the area kept the top soil in place on times of drought. Now that the cattle had been grazing and the cowboys had been working the area, the grass was not prospering creating huge dust storms when the wind blew and there was no rain or plants to keep it down. The dust storms posed a worry to the ranch owners that they would lose cattle and therefore lose profit that they decided to divide up and sell the world's biggest cattle
In around 1930 Oklahoma,Texas,Kansas,New Mexico and Colorado were mostly dry grasslands. These states got hit by these black dust and dirt storms many times. People used wet towels to cover cracks in the houses like under doors and windows so the dust/dirt wouldn’t go into the houses.