The Dust Bowl also known as the dirty thirties was a major crisis that happened in the United States in the 1930's. Drought struck over the Midwest causing their crops to perish and eventually making a majority of the farmers go into poverty. Thus causing them to flee from their homes and their belongings. looking for opportunities elsewhere. Some walked, some took the train, and some drove if they were fortunate enough to afford one. There are many different primary sources that picture this crisis which all lead to the conclusion that it was a devastating era in the Midwest and filled with misfortune. A few primary examples are as follows.
This picture shows one of the many dust storms that the Mid-West encountered in the Dust Bowl. In
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In the advertisement on the billboard payed for by the Southern Pacific railroad, it says “Next time try the train and relax.” However, this implies that the railroad company is taunting them because a majority of the farming business were run into the ground. There is no way that they would be able to afford a train ticket to travel half way across the United States. Also when looking at the source, the two people in the picture who appear to be husband and wife are carrying very little with them. This is most likely the case because of the many dust storms they had encountered and nothing was salvageable to keep. This also may be the case because they couldn’t afford something such as a mule to carry their stuff and even less an automobile. This source truly shows how much poverty these farmers were in because one train ticket to the Midwest to California was a little under seventy dollars. As known, money was more valuable in the past. However, if they made as much as minimum wage in those times which was around 25 cents and they worked for 8 hours a day, they would be able to afford one train ticket in a month and change. But farmers worked countless hours a day and still couldn’t make that small amount of money. That is why most farms had to walk instead of taking the train or …show more content…
He was most likely a member of the Okies who were a group of famers who decided that it was best to seek opportunities elsewhere so they headed west towards California. However, these farmers didn’t have one key piece of information which was that the stock market had recently crashed in California. So they were basically moving from one disaster to another. This source also depicts a woman and her child. It appears as if the woman is covering her nose. This implies that there was so much dirt/dust in the air that they were starting to inhale it. The baby also appears to be in a full body suit because it is very bad for babies to inhale other substances other than air. Salvageable or not, this family had no choice but to bring along most of their stuff because they had themselves to support and a child. They most likely also made a big investment on the car so they could afford to buy new furniture and other
The dust bowl was a nitty gritty nightmare that lasted about a decade. It took place in the drought-stricken region of the United States, midst the Great Depression era. This period in time is generally considered as one of the hardest times in history. The dust bowl storms were often so atrocious that people referred to them as "Black Blizzards." Not only did the dust bowl make things tough for farmers, when the dust bowl swept up around 100 million acres of topsoil, but also for the rest of middle, United States.1
The Dust Bowl was a treacherous storm, which occurred in the years of the 1930’s, which affected the Midwestern people, an example the farmers, which taught us new technologies and methods of farming. John Steinbeck wrote in his novel from 1939 The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, Caravans, carloads, and homeless. Totals of 20,000, 50,000, 100,000, and 200,000 people. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, food, and most of all for land." The early thirties opened with prosperity and growth. At the time the Midwest was full of agricultural
With high winds, no rain, and loose soil, The Dust Bowl era was ready to
During the 1900’s a lot of devastating events occurred that led to the Dust Bowl. Some of these events were the stock market crash and the Great Depression. Specifically, the 1930’s was a period that held very severe dust storms. The dust storms remained extremely critical for about 6 years; this period of time became known as The Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl had tremendously negative effects on both the people in the region and the land in which the dust storms were located.
During The great depression, African Americans had to pretend to be white in order to get and keep a job. (Malcolm's mother had to do this in order to keep her job)
The Dust Bowl was suffered the most in the Great Plains, in the area around Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, and Texas in the area of about 100,000,000 acres of land, in the 1930’s (Goldwag). The reason why these areas suffered the most was due to the number of fields all around them. The area suffered hardships due to human error, heat, and drought, turning fields into powder (Goldwag). This caused the hardships of the great depression to be much worse than imagined. This then implies food shortages due to the droughts, making it very difficult to feed the poor in the times of the great depression. When the droughts began to hit the plains, roughly one third of farmers left their homes, looking for migrant work (Trimarchi). These folks were known as okies (Trimarchi). The Dust Bowl affected a large area of the nation, and many peoples lives changed because of
One has not experienced the life of living in dirt until he has been in the dust bowl. It was a decade-long dust storm that impacted hundreds of farmers and their farmlands. Hardship was among one of the influences of the storm, which affected both farm workers and city folks. The storm also brought the elements of destruction and darkness, which reigned chaos across the Plains. Together, these issues gave the storm its popular name, “black blizzard” (Documentary, 2014). Such a name was given due to the storm’s visibility as a large black cloud, which made it look evil and scary. Although the black blizzard is what some people call the dust storm, most will refer it as the dust bowl.
The Dust Bowl was a tragedy in America in which millions of acres of semi-arid plains were reduced to nothing but a cloud of dust. Due largely to massive amounts of dry farming and overgrazing of cattle the grasslands slowly withered away. With the drought of 1930 the grasslands blew in the wind, covering houses and forced almost four hundred thousand people out of their homes.(“:The Dust Bowl”LOC). Nineteen states at the heart of the United States were part of the massive dust bowl.
The Dust Bowl, as the majority of the people know it, was a period of time in the great plains, during the 1930’s, where some of the most severe sand storms known took place. The dust bowl lasted for about a decade and it affected New Mexico, Kansas, Texas, and Colorado. The Dust bowl lasted from 1931 to 1939. When the Drought hit the great plains, around one third of the farmers left. The dust storms caused many problems for many people, but especially the farmers that depended on the success of their crops to support their family.
The Dust Bowl was a time during the 1930’s when a drought and over-farmed land caused years of dust storms to ravage the American southwest.Loose topsoil was picked up by strong winds to form black storms of dust and dirt. Farmers had to board up their houses in preparation for when the growing black cloud on the horizon would come crashing down on their houses. Thousands of farmers couldn't pay their loans due to lost crops and banks foreclosed on their farms. This event coincided with the height of the Great Depression, strengthening the effects of both terrible phenomena.
In 1931 an event called the Dust Bowl began. A nickname for this is the “Dirty Thirties”. This is because of all of the dust. The Dust Bowl was caused by over farming of land and drought. There were over 50 storms in just the first two years. Many people moved from the Great Plains to work in factories
Life in the midwest of the United States during the 1930s was hardly quintessential. A notable provoker for this adversity was the dust storm known as the “Dust Bowl”, that lasted until about 1940. The Dust Bowl had consequences all over the United States. Besides causing the largest migration in American history when people began fleeing the midwest, it lead to the deaths of thousands of people and prompted soil conservation campaigns that called forth on the federal government. The Dust Bowl was an entirely avoidable tragedy rooted in greed and ignorance where innocent people paid the price.
In the 1930’s a disastrous event happened that impacted the era and changed people's lives. The event is the Dust Bowl, which lasted for eight years in the Southwest of the country including Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. A drought occurred from 1934 to 1937 and caused plants to die and there was no root system to hold soil down. As wind swirled, it picked up the topsoil and thick black dust clouds formed. The clouds were thick enough to cover up the sun. The dust storms killed livestock by suffocation
The article “Black Blizzard” from Scholastic Scope describes about the Dust Bowl and how people survived in the 1930s. Dust storms happened when big gusts of wind picked up dirt and dried up soil, blew across the region and destroyed property and lives. Hundred of these storms went through Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, New Mexico and Colorado. In the early 1900s, families moved to the Great Plains to farm. But they dug up the grasslands, so when a drought occurred, it was so dry that the dirt started to blow away. Farmers had no money because they couldn’t grow crops and they were forced to move west. These farmers went to California, looking for jobs and food along the way. It was tough for a lot of people because there weren’t enough jobs or
The Dust Bowl was given its name after the series of dust storms that started in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, a 150,000-square-mile area. This all started due to the little rainfall, light soil, and high winds, which is a destructive combination. Once the drought hit from 1934 to 1937, the soil lacked water, so the crops and grass were dying. As farmers plowed away the dead prairie grass that held the topsoil for thousands of years, the wind began