Ever-smelled destruction, and seen destruction? Well some people have. They saw families, die and move away. Better, close and cover the windows and doors here comes the dust. This destruction was the dust bowl of the 1930’s. 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. 2.5 million Had to leave their home and their whole family couldn’t leave
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.
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 Dust Bowl was a terrible era for America and took an extended time for recovery. It was a series of dust storms happening from 1932 to 1938 (Jones 1). Also known as the dirty thirties, the Dust Bowl was not the best time to be a farmer considering fifty million acres of farm land was destroyed ("Dust Bowl" 1). "The cause of the Dust Bowl was a mixture of natural drought and poor farming practices" (Trimarchi 1). Even though the Dust Bowl was an important part of American history, it caused much devastation and damage to the environment, people, and the economy.
“ The story highlights a very real and relatable experience about a family driven out of their home due to economic hardship and drought. Also known as “The Dirty Thirties,” the Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms causing major agricultural damage to the American west—especially the Oklahoma panhandle area, Kansas, and northern Texas. Farming methods at the time contributed to the severity of the problem. The arrival of farmers to the Great Plains created conditions for significant soil erosion during naturally occurring periods of cool sea surface water temperatures that regulate precipitation. “ http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/legacy/ 3.
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.
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.”
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.
In the 1930s there was an extremely long period of drought that happened in the Southern Plains of the United States. Not only did the area suffer severe dust storms that made crops fail throughout the entire region, but it caused the lives of many livestock and people to be taken away. This decade of dryness was known as the Dust Bowl. Although the Dust Bowl only lasted about 10 years, the economic impacts it had lasted for much longer. Some scientists believe it was the worst drought in North America in 300 years.
Farmers across the great plains longed for rain. Day after day the weather offered on relief for anyone. The Dust Bowl covered three hundred thousand square miles of territory. It banked against houses and farm buildings snow and buried fences. All of the dirt penetrated into the engines of cars and clogged vital parts.
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 dust bowl is famous for being the worst and the longest disaster. During the event to the dust bowl farmers lost crops. Farmers also had to sell their animals because
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.
The story starts off by telling you to imagine what it’d be like to live in the 1930’s when the Dust Bowl had taken effect. When dust storms came everyone in the area had to prepare quickly to withstand them. The wind combined with the dust and gravelly dirt was very strong and loud, easily getting into houses and cutting off fresh oxygen. Dust storms of the 1930’s were supposedly one of the worst natural disasters. They had affected everyone and everything in the area, so many Migrated West.
The dust bowl is very serious. “But in the summer of 1931, the rains disappeared. Crops withered and died. There had always been strong winds and dust on the Plains, but now over plowing created conditions for disaster. There was dust everywhere, because the people couldve worried about others than themselves.
“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.