The ‘Dust Bowl’ refers to a period in the 1930s which caused great damage to the ecology and agriculture of the prairies of the US and Canada. It was caused due to instances of severe drought, and a failure by farmers in the region of the ‘Great Plains’ to adopt proper farming techniques in the largely arid region. It caused severe wind erosion in the area. The drought of the ‘Dust Bowl’ came in the years of 1934, 1936, and 1939-1940 but some regions there had drought-like conditions for almost eight years.
The term ‘the Dust Bowl’ was originally a reference to the geographical area which was affected by the dust caused by the vast dust storms. However, today the term refers to the event and the era of the 1930s itself. It’s also referred to as ‘The Dirty Thirties’. The drought and soil erosion were centered mainly on the panhandle regions of the states of Texas and Oklahoma. It also affected the neighboring regions of states like Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. It caused the movement of thousands of refugees from the region into other states like California where they were referred to as ‘Okies’ as most of them came from Oklahoma. These refugees had to abandon their homes and farms as they were unable to pay any mortgages or grow crops on their farms. The onset of the ‘Great Depression’ in the early 1930s compounded the problem and led to huge deprivation.
The ‘Dust Bowl’ was the worst man-made ecological disaster in the history of the US. During most of the 1930s and into the early 1940s, most of the American heartland turned into a wasteland. For almost a decade, millions of acres of land endured devastating drought which was made worse due to the farming practices in the region. The region’s natural vegetation which held the soil together was removed by farmers during the 1920s to plant crops. This resulted in massive soil erosion and added to the wind and dust storms that plagued the region in the 1930s.
The land became bleak and the sky turned dark as ‘black blizzards’ broke out every other day. It was a scene resembling a biblical plague. The land turned desolate and the sky went dark as “black blizzards” (dust storms) flared up day in and day out. It was something like a biblical plague. Between 1930 and 1940, approximately 3.5 million desperately poor Americans left their desolate farms in the High Plains and migrated to California.
The administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt supported the affected areas with a multitude of aid programs ranging from planting trees to revitalize the soil, distributing food to the hungry, and teaching the farmers dryland farming techniques. Dorothea Lange and other photographers captured the event in many photographs. Attached below are 30 photos of people who lived through the era, with their very human emotions and the landscapes which they traveled in the ‘Dust Bowl’ period:
- Farm machinery buried by a dust storm near a barn lot in Dallas, South Dakota, May 1936.
2. Florence Owens Thompson, 32 with 3 of her 7 children at a pea pickers’ camp in Nipomo, California, March 1936.
3. Dust Bowl farm in the Coldwater District, north of Dalhart, Texas, June 1938.
4. A farmer’s young son amidst the dust in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936.
5. Veteran migrant worker in Wagoner County, Oklahoma, June 1939.
6. A farmer and his sons, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936.
7. Dust storm damage in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936
8. Dust Bowl refugees by the highway near Bakersfield, California, November 1935
9. Sand dunes on a farm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936.
10. Soil piled up in large drifts near Liberal, Kansas, March 1936.
11. A dust storm in Oklahoma, April 1936.
12. The “Black Sunday” dust storm near Spearman, Texas on April 14, 1935.
13. An abandoned farm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936.
14. A migrant and her child near Tracy, California, February 1937.
15. A woman in a pea picker’s camp in California, March 1937.
16. Dust Bowl refugees in California, 1936.
17. A migrant worker’s home near a pea field, in Imperial Valley, California, 1937.
18. A migrant farmer and his family in Marysville, California, June 1935.
19. A migrant from Texas, in Edison, California, April 1940.
20. Tenant farmers in Imperial Valley, California, March 1937.