In the 1930s, people on the Great Plains

endured one of America’s most destructive

ecological disasters—the Dust Bowl. What

caused fertile farms to turn to dust? How did

people survive? What lessons can we learn

from the Dust Bowl?

We can find answers to these questions in

the region’s history and geography. Centuries

of human interaction with the environment

intensified between 1850 and 1930 as

farmers believed that they could overcome

the area’s variable weather and climate. The

1930s disaster taught them that they were

wrong. However, people survived the dust

and the drought by forging new community

ties and by embracing new government

programs. People also discovered a new

respect for the power of nature. The Dust

Bowl experience demonstrates the complex

relationship between humans and the

dynamic Great Plains environment.

Resources

Related Readings:

Sanora Babb. Whose Names Are Unknown. University of

Oklahoma Press, 1979.

Geoff Cunfer. On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment.

Texas A&M University Press, 2005.

Timothy Egan. The Worst Hard Time. Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

Caroline Henderson. Edited by Alvin O. Turner. Letters From the

Dust Bowl. University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.

R. Douglas Hurt. The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social

History. Nelson-Hall, 1981.

Pamela Riney-Kehrberg. Rooted in Dust: Surviving Drought

and Depression in Southwestern Kansas. University Press of

Kansas, 1994.

John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath. Viking Press, 1939.

Donald Worster. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s.

Oxford University Press, 1979.

Music:

Woody Guthrie. Dust Bowl Ballads. RCA Victor, 1940.

On the Web:

The Dust Bowl: A Film by Ken Burns

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/

The National Drought Mitigation Center

http://drought.unl.edu/DroughtBasics/DustBowl.aspx

Library of Congress Teacher’s Guide to the Dust Bowl Migration

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysource-

sets/dust-bowl-migration/

Documentaries:

Ken Burns, director. Dust Bowl. Florentine Films, 2012.

Chana Gazit, producer. American Experience: Surviving the Dust

Bowl. Steward/Gazit Productions, 1998.

Dan Tyrrell, producer. When Weather Changed History:

Dust Bowl. The Weather Channel, 2008.

The Geography and People of the Plains

Living on the Plains depended on rainfall, but many people

and animals thrived there. Bison shared the Plains with other

animals and with different groups of indigenous people for

thousands of years. Comanche, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and others

called the Southern Plains home. After 1800, Native Americans

had to share the Plains with other people. An increase in

hunting led to the decline of the bison, and as the human

presence in the region grew, towns and ranches occupied more

of the Plains. Humans came to rely more on agriculture, and

farming made them dependent on the rain. The fields, the

grass, the bison, and the dramatic swings in weather inspired

several distinct traditions of art based on the ecology and

cultures of the Great Plains, from Native American artists to

novelists like Willa Cather. Artists who captured the intense

connection of people to their environment in the Plains spoke

for the many migrants, farmers, and shop keepers who had

little time to draw or write fiction.

Bison herd at water, circa 1905

Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

FRONT COVERBACK COVER

D u s T ,

D R o u G h T ,

a n D

D R e a m s

G o n e D R y

Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm, 1936

Arthur Rothstein, photographer

Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

A Traveling

Exhibit and

Public

Programs

for Libraries

about the

Dust Bowl

Please visit ala.org/programming/dustbowl for a complete list of library host sites.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations

expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent

those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

ALA DUST BOWL BROCHURE.indd 1 6/11/14 11:30 AM

Railroads, Farming, and machines Change the Land

Plains inhabitants faced a complex and highly variable

environment featuring periods of wet weather and periods of

drought. People on the Plains also endured hostile weather

phenomena such as tornados, blizzards, floods, hail storms,

dust storms, and the constant wind. The short-lived tornado

or the hail storm both posed less of a threat than the most

serious weather hazard on the Plains: drought. The Plains has

episodic, recurrent drought: periods of average or above

average rainfall alternate with periods of drought. Despite the

challenges with rainfall, economic conditions in the Plains

changed dramatically in the second half of the nineteenth

century with the expansion of railroads into the region from the

east. The railroads, government scientists, and land speculators

all repeated the same phrase: “The rain follows the plow.”

They used this phrase to convince farmers that plowing the

land released moisture into the atmosphere which, in turn,

produced more rain.

“It all Went Black”

A period of prosperity between 1900 and 1920 seemed to

vindicate changes to the land. Although farmers did not know

it at the time, this boom period relied on temporary

conditions. Parts of the Plains received record rainfall in the

1910s and 1920s. The temporary environmental and economic

conditions that encouraged the boom on the Plains ended in

the early 1930s when an epic drought started. No longer

protected by the grass and its deep roots, the soil dried and

turned to a fine dust that the winds spread everywhere. The

lack of rain destroyed the sense of control over nature that Plains

farmers had enjoyed during the boom years. The winds and the

dry fields produced monumental dust storms. Perhaps the

largest one occurred on April 14, 1935, a day known as

Black Sunday, when the sunlight grew dim and the sun was

blocked by the great dust-filled maelstrom.

5

Living Through the Dust Bowl

In the absence of a dramatic storm, dust still swept through

farms. Dust blocked roads, buried fences, destroyed tractors,

and accumulated like great snow drifts against buildings.

In response to the hostile conditions, farm families created

self-help groups to save their way of life. They made a virtue

out of staying on their farms through the dark years. Women

often added new duties to their already extensive work. Some

people left their farms and moved to the nearest urban center,

while others packed their meager belongings and went west,

especially to California. Many more farmers stayed. Historians

estimate that seventy to eighty percent of people in the region

of the Dust Bowl remained on their land. The intense physical

and psychological experiences of living through dust storms

inspired many artists to try to capture the essence of the

Dust Bowl. For example, Woody Guthrie sang ballads about

the suffering of ordinary folk on the Plains.

The Legacy of the Dust Bowl

Farmers who stayed in the Plains during the Dust Bowl

thought about the economics of agriculture and wondered

what the government might do to help. State and federal

programs to aid farmers in the Dust Bowl region increased in

the late 1930s. The Drought Relief Service, the Soil Erosion

Service, and the Agriculture Department all provided aid to

farmers. Government scientists tried to understand the causes

of the Dust Bowl, a tradition of investigation that continues

today. Scholars now have a better understanding of the

economic forces driving agriculture in the Plains during the

period, and scholars understand the endurance, cooperation, and

creative responses of local communities to the harsh conditions.

Our best bulwark against another ecological crisis on the

Plains remains our collective knowledge. How do we build

strong communities? How do we reimagine economic and

social systems that fit with the natural environment? The

history of the Dust Bowl can inform these discussions.

A man walks around his car during a dust storm, undatedH.H. Finnell CollectionCourtesy of Oklahoma State University Library, Special Collections & University Archives

(Background)

A Texas farm endures in the dust, 1938Dorothea Lange, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Agricultural fields and abandoned farmstead, eastern Montana, date unknownTerry Sohl, photographer Courtesy of United States Geological Survey

Prairie grasses being plowed under, Kansas, 1930sU.S. Soil Conservation ServiceCourtesy of Oklahoma State University Library, Special Collections & University Archives

INSIDE

ALA DUST BOWL BROCHURE.indd 2 6/11/14 11:30 AM