The Dust Bowl
It is the “worst environmental disaster in the United States” (West). This environmental disaster was called the Dust Bowl. It was nearly a decade of a horrible drought that made dust storms. A time where many people had to leave their homes to find refuge. Although it is now way back in the past, it’s important to learn from disasters like this one in order to avoid them in the future. There were many causes to this horrible disaster, and even more effects, some of which lasting for years. One thing for sure was that this disaster wasn’t going to be forgotten. While there are many things that caused the Dust Bowl, probably the biggest factor that played into it was the Homestead Act of 1862, Kinkaid Act of 1904, and Enlarged
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In 1932, there were about 14 storms. By 1933, there were about 38 storms. On April 14, 1935, the worst storm during the time of the “Black Blizzards” (West) happened. This day is now nicknamed Black Sunday. Farmers' crops withered as their livestock were blinded and suffocated to death, all because “their stomachs were full of sand” (West). A 100 million acres of the Southern Plains were all covered in dust, and a storm in May of 1934 had left a total of “12 million tons of dust in Chicago” (West). Even ships far out at sea were covered in dust. With all of this dust there was an epidemic of dust pneumonia. It killed many people, making many seek refuge from these awful …show more content…
Rain had finally fallen. But about 35 million acres of land were now useless for farming. Some of this land is still recovering today. But because of this disaster, we learned some things as a country. Prior to the end of the Dust Bowl, “Congress established the Soil Erosion Service as well as the Prairie States Forestry Project” (History.com Editors). This was to plant trees to act as windbreakers. Farmers around the country now try to keep the nutrients in the ground. Coming from a farmer family, my dad always rotates his crops and tries to leave some of the roots of the plant in the ground. This leads to perfect soil for farming and helps avoid another Dust
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.
Devastation pervaded the decade of the 1930s, which left many people struggling with hardships. High unemployment and homelessness rate preceded the nation. This destruction became known as the Dust Bowl. During the Dust Bowl, high winds referred to as the black blizzards wreaked havoc on the land. A principal, infamous author, Donald Worster, demonstrates in his book, “Dust Bowl The Southern Plains in the 1930s” the living conditions and obstacles people had faced along with the various explanations for the Dust Bowl.
The Dust Bowl is a classic tale of humans pushing too hard against nature and nature pushing back (The Dust Bowl). The narrator of the film said it was the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history (The Dust Bowl). The groups of people that choose to live in this region choose to ignore the history of the land that included droughts and severe winters. Ignoring the severe winters of the 1880’s caused the “Beef Bonanza” to close and a severe drought in the 1890’s that pushed farmers off the land. Farmers ignored the ecosystem by ridding the land of the vegetation that had evolved.
Years ago in the 1930s, tragedy struck in America. Along with the wounding great depression, those in the Southern Plain were hit with a catastrophic dust storm known as the Dust Bowl. From acres of farms being destroyed to people losing their lives, the Dust Bowl was an unfortunate disaster. Some may say “the earth ran amok” (Doc A). The devastating Dust Bowl was ultimately caused by poor weather conditions, new farming technology and the immense removal of grass.
One major example of this is found in Document A, which depicts three first hand accounts and select community discussions to these majorly impactful dust storms. While this document displays the response of individuals after these storms had begun, it also displayed a lack of action and preventive measures. This examines this lack of action by stating how, “On 15 March, Denver reported that a serious dust storm was speeding eastward. Kansans ignored the radio warnings, went about their business as usual, and later wondered what had hit them” (A). This excerpt displays ways in which community members were readily able to ignore the events of the Dust Bowl.
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.
Poor farming conditions was a major cause of the Dust Bowl, for example, farmers didn’t use a farming method called crop rotation and as a result, the nutrients in the soil didn’t have time to replenish. Also, they burned the grass down which killed many nutrients in the soil. Farmers destroyed the grass because they needed space so they could plant crops. The states of Great Plains, “....southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, western Oklahoma, and northern Texas—were affected by extreme dust storms and came to be known as the Dust Bowl” (“The Black Sunday Dust Storm: April 14, 1935” 2). During the Dust Bowl, people were affected because of the dust storms.
All of this caused dust storms to form in the early spring of 1934. The dust storms started out local. Then, two dust storms came into one, enlarging it and making dust storms into a natural disaster. Dust storms went on for thousands of miles, destroying everything in its path. A lot
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).
While the Great Depression was still happening, another complication hit the United States. This complication only affected a small region of America, and caused almost 40 dust storms. “The Dust Bowl was given the name to the great plains region devastated by the drought in the 1930’s depression ridden America,” (Foner and Garraty). The plains region thought the drought was the worst part of their issue, only to find out there was more coming. The land in the region was getting dry without any water, and all the farmlands became dusty fields.
The frontiers of farming made the area more susceptible to soil erosion which blew dust that made people sick from dust pneumonia (Noel Sander).Illnesses would often last for a long time because there was no one there to treat the sick. Wind driven dust storms had appeared in a large number of counties in western Kansas and the. Dust storms had arisen in Oklahoma and Texas panhandles on several occasions between 1933 and 1935, each time filling the air with millions of tons of
Even after this difficult chapter in America’s history, civilians still feel the impact of this monumental event in our lives today. The Dust Bowl was one of America’s greatest disasters because of the economical and environmental contributors, events during the Dust
“The Dust Storm Black Sunday” elucidates descriptive importance and affects of the Dust Bowl in the early 20th century. The authors provide some insight into the concept of what is causing the disastrous dust storms, taking a serious approach to the realities of people exposing to the Dust. Families living in the south struggle to survive in a harsh condition; with limited resources and health problems, so much damage was done to the land that drought hit the area and there was nothing anyone could do to stop the disaster. After the drought ended by the 1940s a wide range of migration took place in the south that led people to migrate to California. This information led into deeper understanding and further knowledge about the Dust bowl and
An epidemic raged throughout the Plains: they called it dust pneumonia.” Everybody was dying, even
“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.