The Dust Bowl
By: Cheyenne Hiebner
Can you imagine 8 full years of dust blowing creating giant black dust clouds coming to destroy your land and kill all you animals?
Questions that I will answer... and things I will discuss
- What is a Dust Bowl?
- Why did it occur?
- What is the "Great Plow-up" and how did it affect the Dust Bowl?
- What role did the Great Depression play in the Dust bowl?
- Finally what lessons did they learn and how can another Dust Bowl be prevented again?
The Great Depressions Effects...
When people rushed the the Great Plains to take advantage of the land the nation went into the depression. Wheat prices went from $2 a bushel to 40 cents a bushel. When prices fell so did the farmers. The fields they had plowed up were abandoned and left behind for better land.
Events of the Dust Bowl...
- When the Farmers came to the Great Plains they plowed up the prairie grass and planted wheat
- Rains came and caused the "Great Plow-Up" leaving the land exposed and naked
- 1931 -> the rains didn't come causing drought and their first "black blizzard"
- 1932 -> 14 dust storms that get progressively worse
- September of 1933 -> over 6 million pigs are slaughtered to stabilize wheat prices
- 1934 -> dust storms grow further away from Oklahoma/Kansas area and more into the Great Plains
- May of '34 -> the drought gets worse and effected more than 75% of the country and 27 states were severely affected
- December of 1934 -> approximately 35 million acres of land are destroyed and 125 million acres of land are losing topsoils
- January 1935 -> farmers are forced to give up cattle to slaughter
- April 14, 1935 -> "Black Sunday" comes
- Experts estimate that 850 million tons of topsoil blew over the Southern Plains during the year of 1935
- 1939 -> rainfall finally comes ending the 8-year drought
Cattle lay dead because of dust in their lungs.
Dust covered everything after the dust storms hit.
Black Sunday came as a surprise and was the largest of all dust storms.
How did the farmers prevent another Dust Bowl?
- With the new technology and recent natural gas discoveries Farmers could pump up water form Ogallala Aquifer to irrigate their land
- Farmers learned they need to take care of their land to keep from another Dust Bowl
In Conclusion...
The Dust Bowl was a horrible time and we CAN prevent it from happening again. The farmers are now plowing contours in the land to keep the soil in place.