1. One of the worst environmental
disasters in U.S. History
#5

2.  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

3.  Dust Bowl Questions – Due Tuesday
 Dust Bowl Map – Due Thursday
 Unit 6 Quiz 2 - Thursday

4.  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

6. 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

7. The Symptoms
1) Warmer than Ave. Temperatures
** Nebraska – 2.8% warmer in the 30’s
2) 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?

8.  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

9. Black Blizzards
Grasses that once held down the soil were destroyed

10. In one storm, more
dirt was picked up
and moved than in
the 10 years it took
to excavate the
Panama Canal

11. Dust Storms: Baca Co., Colorado, 1935
The loose soil, a drought, and high winds
helped to cause the Dust Bowl.

12. Dust Storms; Black Blizzards, 1934

13. Farmer’s Field - Oklahoma

14. Farmer
and sons,
dust storm
Oklahoma,
1936.

16. The Dust
Bowl
• During the
1930’s, the
Great Plains
suffered from
deadly dust
storms.
•p.431 old text

17. 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.

18. Farm Security
Administration
- Migrant
worker on
California
highway
(1935)

19. Farm Security
Administration:
farmers whose
topsoil blew
away joined the
sod caravans of
"Okies" on
Route 66 to
California.
(Circa 1935)

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. Migrant family looking for work in the fields of California.
- The word “Okie” meant ‘scum’ -

25. 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

27. “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.

28. 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 Guthrie
described 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.

30. Migrant
farmers from
Oklahoma
became
known as
Okies.

31.  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?

32. Farm foreclosure sale in Iowa. (1933)

34. • 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.