Institute for Work & Health. Many bought plows and other farming equipment, and between 1925 and 1930 more than 5 million acres of previously unfarmed land was plowed [source: CSA].With the help of mechanized farming, farmers … The middle of the nation is in the midst of the first of four major drought episodes that would occur over the course of the next decade. The dust storms started at about the same time that the Great Depression really began to grip the country, and it continued to sweep across the Southern Plains—western Kansas, eastern Colorado, New Mexico, and the panhandle regions of Texas and Oklahoma—until the late 1930s. 398, Washington, D.C. Warrick, R.A. 1980. Migration along Route 66. In the summer of 1931, rain stopped falling and a drought that would last for most of the decade descended on the region. That’s what really happened during the Dust Bowl. The term "Dust Bowl" was coined when an AP reporter, Robert Geiger, used it to describe the drought-affected south central United States in the aftermath of horrific dust storms. Another drawback was that with the return of the rains, many people soon forgot about conservation programs and measures implemented during the 1930s droughts. Families wore respiratory masks handed out by Red Cross workers, cleaned their homes each morning with shovels and brooms, and draped wet sheets over doors and windows to help filter out the dust. It was the most damaging and prolonged environmental disaster in American history. In fact, the new production demands and positive climatic conditions brought the United States into a rapid economic boom. Drought and Natural Resources Management in the United States: Impacts and Implications of the 1987–89 Drought. In addition to this inaccurate information, most settlers had little money and few other assets, and their farming experience was based on conditions in the more humid eastern United States, so the crops and cultivation practices they chose often were not suitable for the Great Plains. Many accidents and natural disasters have done serious environmental damage to the United States. Learn more about this period and its impacts. Migrant Farmers and Living Conditions. Government Camps During the Dust Bowl. Low crop prices and high machinery costs (discussed in the previous section) meant that farmers needed to cultivate more land to produce enough to meet their required payments. As Donald Worster, the leading historian of the Dust Bowl, put it, “In no other instance was there greater or more sustained damage to the American land . At its worst, the Dust Bowl covered about 100 million acres in the Southern Plains, an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania. This ecological and economic disaster and the region where it happened came to be known as the Dust Bowl. These events occurred in such rapid succession that affected regions were not able to recover adequately before another drought began. Of all the droughts that have occurred in the United States, the drought events of the 1930s are widely considered to be the “drought of record” for the nation. Thus, even though the exact economic losses are not known for this time period, they were substantial enough to cause widespread economic disruption that affected the entire nation. The Dust Bowl eventually resulted in the mass migration of people to the state of California. The depression helped “soften deep-rooted, hard-line attitudes of free enterprise, individualism, and the passive role of the government”, thus paving the way for Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, which in turn provided a framework for drought relief programs for the Great Plains (Warrick, 1980). The Dust Bowl And Hobos. Several expeditions had explored the region, but they were not studying the region for its agricultural potential, and, furthermore, their findings went into government reports that were not readily available to the general public (Fite, 1966). Federal aid to the drought-affected states was first given in 1932, but the first funds marked specifically for drought relief were not released until the fall of 1933. (Warrick et al., 1975, and Hurt, 1981, discuss these issues in greater detail; see the reference section for the full citations.) The idea that the climate of the Great Plains was changing, particularly in response to human settlement, was popularly accepted in the last half of the 19th century. The Dust Bowl is a term which was coined by a journalist during the “Dirty Thirties”. The Dust Bowl The impact of this mass migration had both positive and negative effects on California and the country as a whole. Dust Bowl in Text: Persuasive Rhetoric in the Dust Bowl Story Objective: Students will understand examples of persuasive language and will learn about conditions in the Dust Bowl region in the mid-1930s by examining a speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a … Hurt, D.R. Imagine soil so dry that plants disappear and dirt blows past your door like sand. The primary impact area of the Dust Bowl, as it came to be known, was on the Southern Plains. According to the WPA, three-fifths of all first-time rural relief cases in the Great Plains area were directly related to drought, with a disproportionate amount of cases being farmers (68%) and especially tenant farmers (70% of the 68%). Clothes in the closets are covered with dust. Several actions in the 1920s also increased the region’s vulnerability to drought. The peculiar combination of these circumstances and the severity and areal coverage of the event played a part in making the 1930s drought the widely accepted drought of record for the United States. A bulletin by the Works Progress Administration reported that 21% of all rural families in the Great Plains were receiving federal emergency relief (Link et al., 1937). The Dust Bowl of the 1930s stands as the United States’ worst environmental disaster in history. At that rate, it will be completely dry within a century. Another severe drought spread across the U.S., but its impacts were lessened due to the lessons learned from the Dust Bowl years. Baker; and W. Brinkman. Warrick et al. (Image: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress LC-USZ62-16083). Between 2013 and 2015, the aquifer lost 10.7 million acre-feet of storage. The fact that the Dust Bowl happened during the Great Depression in the 1930s, caused even more economic problems for farmers. In addition, a record wheat crop in 1931 sent crop prices even lower. PBS Ken Burns Dust Bowl Series: gpb.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/economics-dust-bowl-gallery/ken-burns-the-dust-bowl/ Get a verified writer to help you with What Caused the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s was arguably one of the worst environmental disasters of the 20th century. Misleading information, however, was plentiful. But the earliest settlements occurred during a wet cycle, and the first crops flourished, so settlers were encouraged to continue practices that would later have to be abandoned. *Egan, Timothy. In his epilogue to "The Worst Hard Time," Egan writes: In the 21st century, there are new dangers facing the Southern Plains. And how did the Dust Bowl affect farmers? Fite, G.C. The WPA report also noted that 21% of all rural families in the Great Plains area were receiving federal emergency relief by 1936 (Link et al., 1937); the number was as high as 90% in hard-hit counties (Warrick, 1980). When the national economy went into decline in the late 1920s because of the Great Depression, agriculture was even more adversely affected. Agribusiness is pumping water from the aquifer eight times faster than rain and other natural forces can refill it. Migration During the Dust Bowl. (1975) describe these drought relief programs, which are credited with saving many livelihoods throughout the drought periods. By 1941, most areas of the country were receiving near-normal rainfalls. Effects of the Plains drought sent economic and social ripples throughout the country. Many other proactive measures taken after the 1930s drought also reduced rural and urban vulnerability to drought, including new or enlarged reservoirs, improved domestic water systems, changes in farm policies, new insurance and aid programs, and removal of some of the most sensitive agricultural lands from production (Riebsame et al., 1991). The Dust Bowl was a decade-long catastrophe that swept up 100 million acres of topsoil in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. IIASA Proceedings Series, Vol. Dust storms also swept across the northern prairies of the United States and Canada, but the damage there couldn't compare to the devastation farther south. Although cable news and the internet weren’t around to sensationalize the prolonged event, the Great Plains, and Southern Plains were devastated by the damage. 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