Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl was a series of dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1933 to 1940.

The panhandle of Oklahoma was in the heart of the region hit the hardest.

The dust bowl was caused by severe drought conditions, following decades of extensive farming without crop rotation and by farmers using techniques that caused erosion.

The fertile soil of the Great Plains had been exposed through removal of grass during plowing.

During the drought, the soil dried out, became dust, and blew away eastwards, mostly in large black clouds.

At times, the clouds blackened the sky all the way to Chicago, and much of the soil was completely lost into the Atlantic Ocean.

These devastating storms were called dusters or black blizzards.

Sand drifted like snow and piled up, often burying equipment...

vehicles...

fences...

homes...

and other buildings...

Farmers and farmers' wives faced extreme difficulties struggling to keep houses, buildings, and vehicles clean.

People hung up sheets over their windows to try to keep the dust out. But it still sifted in, covering furniture and bedding.

Gritty dust got into the drinking water, food, and everything.

People often had to wear masks to keep from breathing the dust.

Breathing so much dust caused some people to get respiratory diseases, such as pneumonia, and some people and countless animals even died.

Millions of acres of crops were destroyed, pelted by dust, buried by dust.

Crops were replanted, only to be destroyed again and again.

In countless fields only stubble remained.

Orchards were stripped bare and destroyed.

Farmers went broke, losing their farms and homes to foreclosure.

Sunday, April 14, 1935, started as a clear day in Guymon, Oklahoma. The temperature was in the upper 80’s. By late afternoon the skies were darkened, not by rain clouds, but by the worst of the black blizzards.

Throughout the southern High Plains temperatures fell more than 50 degrees in only a few hours as winds as high as 70 miles per hour blew black soil from Canada and northern Plains states. The relative humidity dropped to less than 10%.

Total darkness lasted for 40 minutes and was followed by 3 hours of partial darkness. Witnesses reported that they could not see 5 feet in front of them at certain points.

This day became known as “Black Sunday.”

Still the dust storms continued for years.

Farmers called this seemingly endless nightmare the “Dirty Thirties.”

The ecological disaster, which had begun just as the economic effects of the Great Depression were getting worse, caused many people to leave their homes in Oklahoma,Texas, and the surrounding plains.

Driven from their homes by dust storms, grasshoppers, and mortgage companies, they loaded their few possessions into broken-down jalopies and headed down the road looking for work.

Over 500,000 Americans were left homeless,

jobless,

hungry,

hopeless.

By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states. Of those, 200,000 moved to California.

Dionne Quintuplets

How would you deal with all that dust, poverty, and hardship? How will the protagonist in Out of the Dust cope with these problems?