What Are The Causes Of The Dust Bowl

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). The first cause is the drought.

In fact the agricultural devastation helped to lengthen the Depression whose effects were felt worldwide. People were left homeless and hungry. It came in as a yellow brown dust that formed in the South and turned black going toward the North. It was hard to breathe, eat, and walk in this extremely crazy weather. People had to wear dust mask to keep their lungs from collecting the dust.

Intro The Dust bowl conveyed an enormous agrarian and monetary hit to the Great Plains and destroyed what was left of the United States Economy during the Great Depression. It continued for a decade, 1930 to 1939, and wrecked ranches and lives all over Texas, Oklahoma panhandles, Colorado, parts of New Mexico, Canada, and Kansas. Monstrous dust storms wrecked pretty much everything from harvests, overwhelming ranches, in such a way it crushed the income and careers of thousands of farmers. Cause In 1930, climate changes over the Pacific and Atlantic Seas altered. The Pacific became cooler than typical and the Atlantic ended up noticeably hotter.

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. During the drought of the 1930’s with no natural anchors to keep the soil into place it dried and turned to dust, and blew away eastward, and southward in large dark clouds. At times the clouds blackened the sky reaching all the way to the East Coast cities such as New York and Washington D.C.

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. First, changes in farming and agriculture over the years led to the conditions that caused the Dust Bowl and impacted the Great Plains.

Dust and depression swept through America at an alarming rate. The devastation and poverty caused during this era will haunt this countries history forever. However, factual history is hard to attain for each historian, writer, or even photographer tells his or her own story. The terrible storms shook the nation to its foundation and sent thousands of people to new lands in search of work and a better life. The Dust Bowl, the migrations, and the search for true factual evidence will shape the accounts of this dark era.

The Dust Bowl took place in the 1930’s, which was also referred to as the “Dirty Thirties” lasted nearly a decade. During this time there were severe dust storms that caused major agriculture devastation primarily in the southern plains. Tens of thousands of families were forced to abandon their homes and farms, and relocated westward.

The drought lasted 8 long years. (Burns) The drought lasted 8 years and it caused many families to go thirsty. The black blizzard was so strong with electricity people could even touch each other without a shock.“Men avoided shaking hands for fear of shocks that could knock a person to the ground.” (Burns)The Dust Storms were so large and full of electricity that it caused men to get a serious shock by only touching each other. The environment was hard to live in.Proof that the environment was hard is “Gradually, the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur.” ("The Dust Bowl") After a period of time in the Dust Bowl the land was bare and could no longer be used for planting or farming and it was just sand. People’s personal lives were affected dreadfully.

The Dust Bowl Introduction Theodore Roosevelt said, “When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” The Dust Bowl was a very bad time for the United States because it was also during The World’s War and the United States was also already in a bad state with the Great Depression going on. The Dust Bowl was a time of economic hardship because people did not know how to stop the problem, people were losing land, the government did not know how to stop the Dust Bowl. Dry Conditions The Dust Bowl was started by farmers growing wheat crops. The reason the dust storms came was because of the wind (Worster, 2017) . The soil was very dry and was cracking from the grass being taken away the grass was holding the earth together.

Imagine living in a period where there was pure dust. Well, in the 1930s there was an environmental disaster in the Midwest called the Dust Bowl. According to Jess C. Porter, “The dust bowl was a period of severe drought accompanied by high winds and high temperatures” (1). Even though the dust storm made the dust bowl worse, the dust bowl was a harsh period of time because the dust bowl caused poverty and it caused many Americans to migrate to California.