The Dust Bowl

Imagine day turned into night. The world is so covered in a thick, blinding dust that all sunlight is blocked out from view. Everyone around you is running from the cloud of dust that will suffocate its victims with a blanket of dust. Think it couldn’t happen? Think again.

In the United States during the 1930s, an area in the middle of the country became known as the Dust Bowl. Huge dust storms ravaged areas in the states of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico. The dust storms were mainly caused by a lack of planning on the part of those who continuously farmed the areas of land and a series of droughts that swept through the ravaged farmlands. The loose soil easily succumbed to the strong winds ready to sweep the land in huge clouds across the already suffering Midwestern states.

The environmental disaster caused over three million people to leave their homes in the Great Plains area. Those leaving hoped to find food, shelter, and a new way of life for their families by moving out West. Although some did find new homes, sadly, many of those people hoping for a better life were often forced to take whatever jobs they could find just to survive. People in other areas did not often treat the immigrants with kindness, believing the flux of people in their own lands would cause overcrowding and hardships for their own families. However, the Dust Bowl did have at least one positive effect on agriculture: people learned to implement farming practices that would save the soil and save the settlers of the Great Plains from facing such an economic disaster of such magnitude ever again.