Dust Bowl
DUST BOWL
DUST BOWL, a 97-million-acre section of southeastern Colorado, northeastern New Mexico, western Kansas, and the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, that in the Depression-torn 1930s was devastated by dust storms, resulting in the one of the greatest agro ecological disasters in American history. Already suffering from one
of the worst droughts in recent history and with eastern markets insisting upon the adoption of unsustainable agricultural practices to maximize production, the region was hit by strong winds that lifted the dry topsoil from fields, creating clouds of dust that, at their worst, plunged communities into total darkness sometimes for hours at a time. As a result of economic and agricultural depression, many small farmers were forced to foreclose and leave the region.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bonnifield, Mathew Paul. The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979.
Gregory, James N. American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Hurt, R. Douglas. The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981.
Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
MichaelEgan