The Dust Bowl
(1930's)
The "heart" of the Dust Bowl was primarily in Northern Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, the south-west corner of Colorado and the north-east corner of New Mexico. However, the storms spread in areas surrounding the eye of the storm. The dust from the storm spread across the mid-west, reaching places as far as Idaho. The red arrows pictures indicate the direction of migrating farmers that were forced from there farms, most of which moved to California to find new homes and jobs to support their families now that they had their jobs taken away by the devastating dust storms.
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As if the staggering amounts of unemployment and poverty were not enough strife during the Great Depression, the dust storms in the mid-western portion of the United States during the 1930's created more issues, especially for farmers and their families.
New technology was available for farmers to use after the Industrial Revolution, and as the demand for crops grew, farmers plowed the land and essentially destroyed it. When droughts set in, the land was left barren, dry, and vulnerable to the high winds that picked of most of the dust left from the dehydrated ground. Dust storms during the 1930's were a large factor in the decline of employment. They killed crops and livestock and left farmland useless, leaving millions of farmers without work and forcing them and their families to migrate to other cities in search of work. After the storms chased farmers out off of their land and forced them to find new places to live and work, the economy suffered more due to the decreased amount of unemployment. |
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U.S. Dust Bowl of 1930'sAs America began developing new technology for farming, farmers were producing massive amounts of food every year. New equipment was being developed which made farming wheat and plowing fields easier, but the over production of wheat was beginning to ruin the soil. As demand for wheat increased, conditions for farming worsened. High winds and long periods of drought did not help, either, and these conditions were what caused the Dust Bowl. During a drought in 1930, wind picked up the dry soil and created a massive dust storm that spanned over more than half of the country. Millions of tons of dust and soil blew over many states in throughout the nation, killing crops and making it impossible for the land to sustain plants.
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