The 120,000 square-mile area the Dust Bowl destroyed was Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado. The Dust Bowl was a name given to the Great Plains region that was struck with a drought in the 1930’s. Before the Depression, many of the farmers in the Great Plains were over producing wheat due to the war. Farmers plowed more land and removed grass in order to make more room for their crops. Then the Depression hit and the demand for wheat decreased. Farmers did not need as much land as before so they left a majority of it unoccupied and bare. Since there was no grass to hold all the dirt down, when winds would pick up the loose dirt it would create dense dust clouds, that were also known as “black blizzards”. These storms ruined
The Dust Bowl The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936, however in some places it lasted until 1940. The Dust Bowl was caused by a severe drought also coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation or other techniques to prevent erosion. Deep plowing of the top soil of the Great Plains had killed the natural grass that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during the period of droughts and high winds.
he early 20th century was a period of social change and urbanization which followed by the Great Depression. The dust become a way of life. A dust bowl survivor described what daily life was like during the dust bowl: “ In the morning the dust hung like fog, and the sun was as red as ripe new blood. All day the dust sifted down from the sky, and the next day it sifted down. An even blanket covered the earth. It settled on the corn, piled up on the tops of the fence posts, piled up on the wires; it settled on roofs, blanketed the weeds and trees” [2]. Strong wind blowed all the time. The sky was cloudy and dusty. The sun hides between the thick layers of dust. Dust blown everywhere and covered everything including houses. Layer of dust piled
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 a variety of unfortunate circumstances at the worst time. The dust bowl refers the 1930’s when during the Great Depression, powerful winds ripped off the top soil (the soil that is best used for farming) and killed many crops. The farmers that were hit the hardest were the ones in the southern great plains. This region was soon known as the Dust Bowl. In the off season, farmers would plant grass to keep the topsoil from being taken with the wind.
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.
“With the gales came the dust. Sometimes it was so thick that it completely hid the sun. Visibility ranged from nothing to fifty feet, the former when the eyes were filled with dirt which could not be avoided, even with goggles ”( Richardson 59). The Dust Bowl was a huge dust storm in the 1930s that stretched from western Kansas to New Mexico. People that lived in that area could not step outside or they would get dust in their lungs. Livestock could not breath or find food sources. Thousands of people lost their homes due to the storm. Changes in farming and agriculture in the early 1900s altered the landscape and soil creating the perfect environment for the Dust Bowl and impacted living conditions and economic policy.
The two things that contributed to the start of the dust bowl are, over-farming and drought. The dust bowl was a terrible dust storm that devastated lives of thousands in the Southern Great Plains. The dust bowl occurred in the 1930’s. People called this time the blackest year.
The Dust Bowl was caused by dust drying up from the drought and the high winds making a huge dust “monster”. Static electricity builds between the dust and helps the dust “monster” grow. The heat, high winds, and no rain just added to the static electricity and made it worse. The Dust Bowl contained 350,000,000 tons of dirt. With all that dirt and static electricity, the “monster” destroyed everything in it's path.
The livestock was another group that was affected in the dust bowl. When the AAA demanded the farmers to plow over there land they killed 6 million young pigs were slaughtered. Many of those pigs just starved because the farmers were no longer working so they could not feed them. When the dust bowl came money farmers and ranchers livestock were killed and when they cut them open there was only dust in there lungs and guts. The cattle grazing was reduced and millions of more acres were plowed and planted. With this happening I can assume that the markets did not have very much meat and a lot of produce.
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.
Simple necessities such as cooking, eating, bathing, and even walking to a neighborhood store became difficult. In the eight years of the dusty drought, the soils that farmers valued most were depleted and damaged. Here’s why. The Dust Bowl occurred in the Great Plains of America, specifically harming Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico. There were four waves of droughts, but often times the people did not have healing time to recover for their losses.
The dust bowl was a man-made and natural disaster that devastated America and messed with millions of lives. 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.
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.
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. During the 1930’s America suffered extreme temperatures. A drought forming across all farm lands due to failure of successful crop rotation cause dust to form.