The Dust Bowl was a time in the United States when a major drought and dust storms swept through the nation. The Dust Bowl stopped farmers from being able to plant crops since all of the good soil blew away, which then forced many families to leave their homes and migrate to other places in search of shelter and work. People left their homes and went to places with mild climates, such as California, which impacted their population and way of life dramatically.
The Dust Bowl, also known as the “Dirty Thirties”, was an environmental disaster that happened in the Midwest during the 1930s. The Dust Bowl included “high winds and choking dust that swept the region from Texas to Nebraska, people and livestock were killed and crops failed across the entire region” (History.com). Kimberly Amadeo said that it was, “a combination of a severe water shortage and harsh farming techniques. Some scientists believe it was the worst drought in North America in 300 years” (Kimberly). The Dust Bowl was caused by weather patterns, which shifted over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. This caused the Pacific ocean to become cooler then normal and the Atlantic to become warmer. With that happening, it changed the jet streams direction so rain could not reach the Great Plains like it did before. After the rain stopped falling in the Great Plains and the wind started blowing around a lot of the soil, farmers had no more fertile soil, so they could not grow anything.
The drought came at different times, or in three waves. The waves came in 1934,1936, and 1939-1940. Some regions experienced the drought for eight years. It was said that, “With insufficient understanding of the ecology of the plains, farmers had conducted extensive deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains during the previous decade; this had displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds” (Wikipedia Contributors). The soil would turn into dust, which prevented crops from growing, then the dust would blow around creating huge dust clouds, which would make the sky gloomy and dark. The dust, named “"black blizzards" or "black rollers", traveled cross country eventually reaching as far as the East Coast and struck cities such as New York City and Washington, D.C.. On the Plains, they often reduced visibility to three feet (1 m) or less” (Wikipedia Contributors). The worst day of the dust storm was called “Black Sunday” because there were terrible wind and dust worst then they had ever seen before. It was described as:
“When a mountain of blackness swept across the High Plains and instantly turned a warm, sunny afternoon into a horrible blackness that was darker than the darkest night. The wall of blowing sand and dust first blasted into the eastern Oklahoma panhandle and far northwestern Oklahoma around 4 PM. It raced to the south and southeast across the main body of Oklahoma that evening, accompanied by heavy blowing dust, winds of 40 MPH or more, and rapidly falling temperatures. But the worst conditions were in the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, where the rolling mass raced more toward the south-southwest – accompanied by a massive wall of blowing dust that resembled a land-based tsunami. Winds in the panhandle reached upwards of 60 MPH, and for at least a brief time, the blackness was so complete that one could not see their own hand in front of their face. It struck Beaver around 4 PM, Boise City around 5:15 PM, and Amarillo at 7:20 PM.” (Black Sunday Dust Storm).
The Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres of land due to the drought and erosion that the Bowl caused.
Farmers unknowingly caused the Dust Bowl because they had been plowing the soil too finely when they would seed the land. Their goal was to break up clods and the crusted topsoil, which would then leave a fine surface for plant growth. The plow had evolved into different designs, but all the machines would still lift the soil, break it up, and turn it over. It was said,
“In the early 30s, many farmers would come back into a plowed field with a set of disc harrows that would break the clods into fine soil particles. A harrow mounted a series of concave sharpened steel discs close together. These discs were pulled through the field at a slight angle so the soil was cut and then turned over by each disc. This produced what was thought to be the "ideal seedbed… Large air spaces, bunches of field trash and hard lumps or clouds are undesirable.” (Plow That Broke The Plains).
This method of farming would leave the area vulnerable to storms. This would not have been a problem during the wet years, but since the area had been very dry it led to bigger issues.
Mrs. Caroline A. Henderson and her husband were from Oklahoma and they lived through the drought. Mrs. Henderson wrote letters to one of her friends, Evelyn, throughout the drought. In her letters she said that, “Our recent transition from rain-soaked eastern Kansas with its green pastures, luxuriant foliage, abundance of flowers, and promise of a generous harvest, to the dust-covered desolation of No Man's Land was a difficult change to crowd into one short day of travel” (Henderson). According to the letters, Mr. and Mrs. Henderson never left the Midwest and they suffered through the storms one day at a time. The lives of those living in the Midwest had changed in only a day and their lives would not be the same after. Many people would start to leave their homes and migrate because they could not live in the Midwest any longer and make a life for themselves. Even if crops did end up growing, they would be sold for little to nothing and that still would not allow the famers to be able to make a living during the Dust Bowl. Whether a family rented or owned a home it was hard for them to make payments ultimately forcing them out of their homes to move somewhere else. It was said, “The Dust Bowl forced tens of thousands of poverty-stricken families to abandon their farms, unable to pay mortgages or grow crops, and losses reached US $25 million per day by 1936 (equivalent to US$440,000,000 in 2017)” (Wikipedia Contributors). Many would develop “dust pneumonia”, which caused their lungs to fill with dust. Dust Pneumonia would result in people to have: burning nose, eyes, lips, mouth, and throat, a cough which could either produce yellow or green mucus or blood, shortness of breath, and chest, nausea, and abdominal pain. Many people would die from dust pneumonia and children would also die from getting lost and stuck in the dust storms because it was easy to be disoriented if there was a storm.
There were some efforts to try to keep people where they were and to try to fix the dust storm problems, so no one would leave. During Roosevelt’s time in office the government tried to fix the problems, “They stopped farmers from plowing up so much grassland. Millions of bare acres were planted with grass. The CCC planted more than two hundred million trees to act as windbreaks. And the government hired experts to teach the farmers about ways of growing crops that would not harm the soil. Some farmers were unwilling to listen to advice from outsiders. So the government began paying them to try the new methods” (Pascal, 85). However, this still was not enough to keep the farmers there. Since many families, especially in Oklahoma and Arkansas, realized the dust storms would never end, or at least not soon enough for them, they started to pack up everything and move to places like California. They were known as “Okies” because they had mostly come from Oklahoma. In the 1930s, California had a population of about 5.7 million people, which rose about 2.5 million after people left the Great Plains and moved to California. Many people who migrated were hired to help on California farms, they were taught how to plant fruits and vegetables, and they were only hired seasonally (Dust Bowl Migration). Most of the workers would follow the harvest living with a bunch of people in crowded camps called Hoovervilles. However, some people who moved away from the Dust Bowl were not all farmers. James N. Gregory examined records to learn more about migrants, his research was based on a survey by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and it showed that only 43 percent of people who migrated actually worked on a farm before they migrated, leaving 57 percent of people who moved only because they could not deal with the dust storms any longer.
Migration away from the Dust Bowl and into places such as California is a well known subject in history. Many journalists and filmmakers documented the events to make sure that this horrific event is not forgotten. Dorothea Lange was a photographer, hired by Roosevelt, to take photos of migrant workers, “She hoped that seeing the misery these people lived in would make the nation more sympathetic” (Pascal, 87). It is such a well-known concept because families migrated away from something that they thought was the worst thing, into an equally negative situation that the Great Depression was. James Gregory said that, “Although it was but one episode out of many struggles with poverty during the 1930s, the Dust Bowl migration became something of synecdoche, the single most common image that later generations would use to memorialize the hardships of that decade ” (Gregory). People did not want to move, but they felt like they had to in order to survive. However, life just seemed to get worse for them after they moved.
People in California had different opinions on the new immigrants. Most people did not like the immigrants because the depression was happening at the time and they would steal the last of the jobs. People in California assumed that the “Okies” were bums even though they were, for the most part, very hard workers. People hated “Okies” so much that, “The Los Angeles police chief sent one hundred and twenty-five policemen to the California border to turn them away before they could enter the state” (Pascal, 86). They did this because California was already affected by the Great Depression: banks closed, industries were affected, and oil companies lost money. Jobs were still scarce and more than one fourth of people were without work. Due to the lack of jobs, people lost their homes and the immigrants that came into California from Oklahoma or other places did not help the situation. The immigrants life in California was difficult. However, when Franklin D. Roosevelt became president he passed the New Deal, which helped to keep banks in business and the people’s savings protected. It also helped to create programs together that would help people find jobs. The WPA and the Works Progress Administration helped to employ millions of citizens to build schools, dams, bridges, and roads. People were also paid by the WPA to build trails in parks. They also built camps that “Okies” would stay in, they had running water and most were clean. However, they still could not hold a vast amount of people or provide jobs.
The Dust Bowl was a series of very harsh wind storms that took over so many lives and consumed them. Many people packed up and left their homes in search of work and safety. The migration into other states left the “Okies” with targets on their backs because most people did not like them. The Great Depression also compounded the situation because the availability of jobs were scarce and the economy in places, such as California, was in ruins. However, most “Okies” that stayed in California ended up shaping the way people in California lived and acted. The Dust Bowl was a major part of history and swept the nation for years until it finally ended, but it is still a big topic that is talked about today. It is important to know because now we know that the farmers were the main cause of the creation of the dust storms, this helps to know how to prevent the dust bowl. Also the “Okies” helped shaped California’s way of life and the way the did things.