Dust Bowl
The "Dust Bowl" is a phrase used to describe prairie regions of the United States and Canada in the 1930s. The Dust Bowl spread from Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north, all the way to Oklahoma and parts of Texas and New Mexico in the south.[1][2]
In these areas, there were many serious dust storms and droughts during the 1930s. These caused major damage to the Dust Bowl areas' economies, ecology, and agriculture.[1] The dust bowl was the worst man-made disaster in U.S history. It was many dust storms that happened for years.
The dust bowl was also suffered by many Canadians, and probably by many Mexicans.
Causes[change | change source]
The people who lived in the Dust Bowl area were mostly farmers. Many years of intensive farming without rain left the soil dry.[3][4] When strong winds blew, they covered cities, towns, and farms in dried, dusty soil, ruining the farmland.[3]
"Black Sunday"[change | change source]
One famous storm on April 14, 1935, called Black Sunday, was so bad it covered dozens of cities in black clouds of dust and made it impossible to see the sky or even a few feet ahead.[4] Writer Timothy Egan says that the Black Sunday storm "carried away twice as much dirt as was dug out of the earth to create the Panama Canal."[5]
Effects[change | change source]
The Dust Bowl period is still considered one of the worst environmental disasters in United States history.[5][3][6] Many thousands of people died from breathing in the dust, or from starvation.[7] Many others who survived lost everything they had, and left the Dust Bowl to look for work in other parts of the country. These people were called "Dust Bowl refugees."[7]
In the days of the bison, grass was anchored into the ground and its leaves eaten. With farming the plants were dug up wholescale.
The seriousness of the Dust Bowl disaster later led to greater use of crop rotation, reforesting and other techniques to preserve the quality and quantity of topsoil in American and Canadian farms.[8] Many songs, books, and works of art were created to tell stories of the people affected by the dust storms. Some of the most famous of these works are the novels The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, the songs of folk music singer Woody Guthrie, and the photography of Dorothea Lange, who took pictures of many Dust Bowl refugees and their families.
Photo gallery
- Hover over each photo to view its label. Click on the picture to make it bigger:
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An Oklahoma dust storm (1935) -
A dust storm covers homes (Texas, 1935) -
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Famous picture of Dust Bowl refugees (1936)
References[change | change source]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945: The Dust Bowl". Teachers’ Resources. United States Library of Congress. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
- ↑ "Canadians Suffer the Dust Bowl". Le Canada: A People’s History – Une Histoire Populaire. CBC Learning. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Vallero, Daniel; Letcher, Trevor M. (2012). Unraveling Environmental Disasters. Newnes. p. 228. ISBN 978-0123973177.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "About the Dust Bowl". Department of English. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Archived from the original on April 26, 2017. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Reis, Ronald A. (2008). The Dust Bowl. Infobase Publishing. p. 10. ISBN 978-1438117461.
- ↑ Burns, Ken; Duncan, Dayton (2012). The Dust Bowl: An Illustrated History. Chronicle Books. p. 66. ISBN 978-1452119151.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Gazit, Chana; & Steward, David (Producers) (2007). American Experience: Surviving the Dust Bowl (DVD). PBS. (Full transcript available online. Archived 2017-02-18 at the Wayback Machine Transcript retrieved April 12, 2016.
- ↑ Cevasco, George A.; Harmond, Richard P. (2009). Modern American Environmentalists: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 435-436. ISBN 978-0801891526.
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