Dust Bowl

Dust Bowl, the name applied to the high plains of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas during the later 1930s as immense dust storms blew across the region, darkening the sky and depositing soil hundreds of miles to the east.At its peak the Dust Bowl covered nearly 100 million acres, with similar conditions extending northward into Canada. In 1938, the worst year for erosion, farmers lost an estimated 850 million tons of topsoil.

Severe wind erosion led to a precipitous drop in farm income, impaired health, and caused widespread damage to houses and machinery. Those conditions, combined with national economic depression, turned many people into refugees; in the worst‐hit counties, one‐third to one‐half of the population left, many migrating to California. For those who stayed, bankruptcies were common in both town and country.

The causes of this environmental catastrophe are disputed. Some historians see the farmers as innocent victims of drought; others argue that agricultural practices were heavily to blame. During World War I and the 1920s, wheat farming expanded rapidly into the windy, drought‐prone plains. Native grasses that had evolved a high degree of climatic resilience abruptly disappeared under the plow. For a while crops were abundant and profits high, but then began a record‐breaking drought that withered the fields and left them bare.

Severe but short‐lived droughts recurred in the decades after the 1930s, but none had the impact of the Dust Bowl years, leading many observers to conclude that farmer ingenuity and improved technology had made another disaster impossible. In truth, while a constant flow of federal dollars along with irrigation from deep aquifers managed to stave off a repeat catastrophe, the future of the region remains volatile and uncertain.
See also Agriculture: Since 1920; Depressions, Economic; Migratory Agricultural Workers; New Deal Era, The; Southwest, The.

Bibliography

Donald Worster , Dust Bowl, 1979.
R. Douglas Hurt , The Dust Bowl, 1981.

Donald Worster