Since its inception as a nation two hundred forty years ago, America has been based off of the ideals of exploration, growth, and progress; and with the acquisition of new territorial tracts of land like that of the Louisiana Purchase or Mexican Cession; Americans of these times believed that their own nation was becoming enhanced and the legacies of democracy and the American culture were being carried on for over three thousand miles. Promises of prosperous futures and an abundance of jobs pushed pioneers and other settlers as far as the California coast to seek out new lives with their families and establish settlements to last for multiple generations. Farmers were one particular group of settlers that were the first to move out West, as the rapid population growth of the nineteenth century stimulated farmers to find more agriculturally-promising territory to settle down and establish a new beginning for oneself and family. Despite many of the natural tribulations faced on the midwestern lands as pioneers, many settlers managed to make stable livings off the land and reap the benefits of living in an enlarged territory away from the busy urban life of the East.
One of the most popular locations for farmers to move to was that of the region encompassing the area of Oklahoma, Kansas, and northern Texas, as this sector of the Great Plains possessed a layer of topsoil as thick as a few feet filled with nutrients. Workers saw hope in this land and worked incessantly to make a decent profit from their harvests and a comfortable lifestyle for themselves. Many of the earlier generations that first became situated upon the land utilized the plains primarily as open space for their animals to graze, but with growing demands like during the time of World War I, more farmers arrived among the plains with being attracted by high grain prices and cheap regions of land for sale, and the means of utilizing the land switched from having it be primarily for livestock to grain harvesting. Newer technology including the gas-powered tractor and newer ploughs facilitated grain cultivation, and larger harvests were obtained, thus providing more success to the farmer. However, with this new and demanding request of the federal government to supply grain to troops and workers supporting the war effort, the land in the Midwest became exhausted of nutrients at a speed never witnessed in prior accounts, thus allowing for the famous natural phenomenon of the 1930s: the Dust Bowl.
The Dust Bowl is the common name provided to a multiple-year drought that ravaged the Great Plains at the same time as the Great Depression, centralizing itself most severely around the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. From about 1934 to 1937, records display a terrible drought that lingered over such territory and erased any possibility of successful harvests. As crops died and the sun flared, the once rich topsoil had turned to bland dirt, and the strong winds of the Midwest began to lift the topsoil into the atmosphere, and the fine dirt particles mixed in an even combination with the air to create a uniform dirt cloud stretching for miles. The powerful winds of the Great Plains region pushed the winds in all directions at speeds sometimes greater than sixty miles per hour, enveloping the entire midsection of the contiguous United States within a storm of dust, erasing most sunlight from vision for several years within this area and permanently eroding much of the land in the Midwest.
When studying United States history and more specifically the Great Depression, it is common to discuss the terrible ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl with it. At first glance, these two instances appear to have no connection, whereas in reality, the Great Depression caused the Dust Bowl to occur in the first place. When the market crashed in 1929, grain prices plummeted, but farmers continued to cultivate surplus amounts of wheat and corn to make a continued profit in order to finance their homes and supplies. These farmers exercised the land so much that it became exhausted of nutrients to support the planted crops, and the three-year drought did no favors to this issue, as it became tougher and tougher to plough the ground for future cultivation. Harvests began to fail, and when the Dust Bowl storms began to arrive along the land, farmers were left with no home in the area or stable profession, thereby pushing them to move out west to places like California with the hope of new job opportunities. For those who stayed in the Midwest, Roosevelt's New Deal helped create the Soil Conservation Service in 1935 that helped replenish the damaged soil and plant trees and grass to help retain water. The process was slow, but its effects lasted for years after the end of the Great Depression.
In retrospect, the Dust Bowl exhibited the worst symptoms of this decade-long depression, as workers scrambled to make enough money to survive and persevere, and in return were faced with an unparalleled ecological disaster related to the entire depression as well. It is often compared to today in California with the recent drought that had lasted over the Central Valley and Sierra Nevada mountain range, but one must compare the accounts and relate them to each time period to receive a more exact response. The Dust Bowl also allowed for American individuals to define American culture on a deeper level, as individuals like John Steinbeck published several novels like The Grapes of Wrath with relation to the Dust Bowl, and songs produced by Woody Guthrie relating the toils and travails of the era as well.
Sources:
http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/about/overview/
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