One of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. History

#5

When & Where did it happen?

How much damage was done?

What was the cause?

Did humans play a role in the disaster?

Now we will learn what happened during the dust bowl years

Ken Burns – Dust Bowl 3 min

Dust Bowl Questions – Due Tuesday

Dust Bowl Map – Due Thursday

Unit 6 Quiz 2 - Thursday

Problem ---Crop Prices Decline

2 main Reasons

1) Overproduction – new technology

- tractors / combines

2) lack of overseas markets

- fewer trading partners

Hawley-Smoot Tariff: protectionist

1) Buy More Land – to put in production

2) Buy More Livestock

3) Buy More Equipment/Seed

Where do the Farmers get the money?

- Borrow from Banks(credit-mortgage)

- Pay off debts with extra crop

The Symptoms1) Warmer than Ave. Temperatures

** Nebraska – 2.8% warmer in the 30’s2) Drought Conditions

** Kansas – 28.8% drier in the 30’s(Locust hit)

3) High Winds (Lack of Tree Cover)4) Poor Farming Practices (Man-made)

- over grazing by stock- more land put in production(plowed)- dry farming (leave some land fallow)

The Result?

Dust Storms began to strike the Great Plains

There were hundreds of storms

1932 – 14 dust storms

1937 – 72 dust storms

April 14, 1935 – biggest one hit

Estimated 300 million metric tons of top soil was deposited in the Atlantic Ocean

- FDR / oval office

500,000 farmers were forced from their homes – refuges – many migrated west(Okies)

Many other farmers lost their lands too

Black BlizzardsGrasses that once held down the soil were destroyed

In one storm, more

dirt was picked up

and moved than in

the 10 years it took

to excavate the

Panama Canal

Dust Storms: Baca Co., Colorado, 1935

The loose soil, a drought, and high winds

helped to cause the Dust Bowl.

Dust Storms; Black Blizzards, 1934

Farmer’s Field - Oklahoma

Farmer

and sons,

dust storm

Oklahoma,

1936.

The Dust

Bowl

• During the 1930’s, the Great Plains suffered from deadly dust storms.

•p.431 old text

Farm foreclosure sale.

(Circa 1933)

Effects of the

Dust Bowl:

• Farmers could barely

make a living, causing

many to leave their

homes for the west.

Farm Security

Administration

- Migrant

worker on

California

highway

(1935)

Farm Security

Administration:

farmers whose

topsoil blew

away joined the

sod caravans of

"Okies" on

Route 66 to

California.

(Circa 1935)

Toward LA,

California. 1937.

(Dorothea Lange.)

Perhaps 2.5

million people

abandoned their

homes in the

Great Plains

during the Great

Depression and

went on the road.

F S A: Families on the road with all their possessions packed

into their trucks, migrating and

looking for work. (Circa 1935)

Many

farmers

became

migrant

farmers

as they

moved from

region to

region

looking for

work.

Migrant family looking for work in the fields of California.

- The word “Okie” meant ‘scum’ -

Farm Security

Administration:

Arkansas

squatter for

three years near

Bakefield,

California.

Photo by D.

Lange. (Circa

1935)

Migrant

farmers from

Arkansas

became known

as Arkies

“A picture is worth a

thousand words”

Dorothea Lange's"Migrant Mother," destitute in a pea

picker's camp, because of the failure of

the early pea crop. These people had just

sold their tent in order to buy food. Most

of the 2,500 people in this camp were

destitute. By the end of the decade there

were still 4 million migrants on the road.

Lange's photographs

humanized the tragic

consequences of the

Great Depression.

American Imagination

• The plight of the migrants captured the imagination of some of America’s greatest writers and artists.

•Author John Steinbeck &

• singer-writer Woody Guthriedescribed the Dust Bowl and the disaster’s effect on the people it touched.

• Guthrie’s lyrics spoke of the hardships all Americans felt during the Great Depression.

The droughts and dust storms left many in the Dust Bowl with no way to make a living, some simply picked up and moved:

Migrants

• By the end of the 1930s, 2.5 million people had left the Great Plains states.

• Many headed along Route 66 to California, then settled in camps and sought work on farms.

• The migrants were called Okies, after the state of Oklahoma, but migrants came from many states.

• Many migrants met hardship and discrimination.

The Depression defied most government efforts to defeat it, and Americans had to fend for themselves.

Migrant

farmers from

Oklahoma

became

known as

Okies.

If a farmer couldn’t pay their mortgage

the bank would Foreclose on them

Foreclosure by Banks led to Auctions

Farmers Fought back with Penny Auctions

in a last attempt to stay on their land

Prospective buyers were intimidated by friends and neighbors of the farmer

Why would they do this?

Farm foreclosure sale in Iowa. (1933)

• Nature delivered another cruel blow. In 1931 rain stopped falling across

much of the Great Plains region.

• This drought, or period of below average rainfall, lasted for several years,

and millions of people had fled the area by the time it lifted.

• Agricultural practices in the 1930s left the area vulnerable to droughts.

• Land once covered with protective grasses was now bare, with no

vegetation to hold the soil in place.

• When wind storms came, they stripped the rich topsoil and blew it

hundreds of miles. The dust sometimes flew as far as the Atlantic Coast.

• Dust mounds choked crops and buried farm equipment, and dust blew

into windows and under doors.

• The storms came year after year, and the hardest hit areas of Oklahoma,

Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas eventually became known as

the Dust Bowl.