Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl, a name that encompasses both a section of the Great Plains and a period of drought in the United States, was the greatest human-made ecological disaster in American history and one of the most devastating environmental disasters of the 20th century.

During the 1930s, with the most severe period occurring between 1934 and 1935, 27 U.S. states—75 percent of the country—were affected by catastrophic droughts that deepened and exacerbated the deprivations and economic hardship of the Great Depression. Although massive dust storms spread across the country, parts of six states, collectively known as the Dust Bowl—southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, northeastern New Mexico, and southwest Nebraska—were particularly hard-hit and saw agricultural and economic collapse as drought conditions collided with decades of environmental misuse. By 1940 an estimated 2.5 million people had migrated out of the Plains states, more than 200,000 of whom moved to California in search of employment in the state’s agricultural sector. To assist struggling Americans, the federal government created new relief programs that provided financial assistance, formed agencies that directed desperately needed employment, and implemented conservation and agricultural reform policies. The result was a significant expansion of federal power that lasted into the 1940s. Perhaps more than any other event in U.S. history, the Dust Bowl demonstrated how environmental factors can have a far-reaching impact across many sectors of society.

The Homestead Act of 1862: Settling of the Great Plains

Across the second half of the 19th century, hundreds of thousands of Americans internally migrated from east to west, moving into Midwestern states, the Pacific Northwest, and the Great Plains. Their movement was facilitated by improvements in technology, such as the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the desire for wealth spurred by the Gold Rush of 1849, and federal legislation, such as the “free land” of the Homestead Act of 1862, which drove settlement west, notably into lands that had previously been mostly inhabited by Indigenous communities.

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The act, which took effect January 1, 1863, granted 160 acres (65 hectares) of unappropriated public lands to anyone who paid a small filing fee and agreed to work on the land and improve it, including by building a residence, over a five-year period. The Homestead Act proved one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of the American West, as hundreds of thousands of people moved to the Great Plains in an effort to take advantage of the free land. These settlers—Black and white—moved to Kansas, Nebraska, the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), Dakota Territory, and elsewhere in the West. Although many of these lands went to cattle owners and speculators, of the approximately 270 million acres (109 million hectares) distributed under the 1862 Homestead Act, about 80 million acres (32 million hectares) were settled by homesteaders and small farmers between 1862 and 1904. Many of these small farmers were inexperienced or utilized eastern farming practices, such as deep plowing, that were not appropriate for the Great Plains’ naturally dry, semiarid climate. The settlers dug up native grasses and the sod that they were rooted in, earning them the moniker “sodbusters.”

World War I: Wheat for the war effort

Use of the Great Plains agricultural lands shifted with World War I, when millions of acres of the area’s grasslands that had supported mostly stock raising were put under the plow to grow wheat to support the war effort. To prep for planting, farmers stripped more lands of their native grasses, further degrading the native environment and unwittingly setting the stage for environmental disaster.

In the years that followed World War I, a combination of economic pressure and technological change further accelerated the transformation of the Plains. During the 1920s farmers expanded cultivation at an unprecedented pace—a 300 percent increase—encouraged by the promise of World War I-era profits and driven by new machinery such as tractors and mechanized plows that made it possible to work larger areas more quickly and at lower cost. Many farmers increased wheat production dramatically, removing more native grasses (this period is often described as the Great Plow-Up) and overstocking grazing lands with cattle. This agricultural expansion flooded the market, depressing crop prices even before the onset of the Great Depression. As economic conditions worsened in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and the price of wheat dropped, farmers were forced to plow even more land to make the same profit.

Dust Bowl: Ecological collapse

By the early 1930s farmers’ land mismanagement was literally and figuratively laid bare. Millions of acres of Great Plains farmland—one-third of the region’s agricultural terrain—lay exposed and vulnerable. The Plains—which are naturally dry and receive an average rainfall of less than 20 inches (500 mm) in a typical year—suffered a severe multiyear drought that began in the summer of 1931. Heavy spring winds flowed down the sides of the Rocky Mountains, rushed across the flat plains, and picked up speed as they went. The region’s exposed topsoil—dry to a depth of three feet in some growing seasons and now robbed of the anchoring water-retaining roots of its native grasses—was carried off by these winds. “Black blizzards” of windblown soil blocked out the sun and piled the dirt in drifts like snow, pushing it up against farm buildings and houses. The destruction was staggering: farms and crops destroyed, expensive equipment rendered useless by grit, and animals blinded or suffocated by the dust.

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Present-day studies estimate that some 1.2 billion tons (nearly 1.1 billion metric tons) of soil were lost across 100 million acres (about 156,000 square miles [405,000 square km]) of the Great Plains between 1934 and 1935, the drought’s most severe period.

Occasionally, the dust storms swept completely across the country to the East Coast. A huge storm that struck between May 9–12, 1934, created dusty conditions in areas of the country unaffected by the period’s droughts. Visibility was reduced from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Chicago, where skyscrapers were obscured, to the Canadian border in Buffalo, New York, and the far northeast in Portland, Maine. In an article titled “Huge Dust Cloud, Blown 1,500 Miles, Dims City 5 Hours,” The New York Times reported that 300,000,000 tons of dust were distributed across the country and that at the height of the storm, Central Park, located less than 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from the Empire State Building, could not be seen from the building’s observation tower.

Migration and resettlement

The livelihoods and economic prospects of the Dust Bowl farmers were destroyed along with their farms. Over the course of the 1930s, more than 2.5 million people fled the Great Plains—in the Texas panhandle alone, 34 percent of farmers left their lands between 1935 and 1937. The migrants went looking not only for economic opportunity but also for a better environment to protect the health and safety of their families. Asthma rates in the Dust Bowl increased during the drought period, and an estimated 7,000 residents died from “dust pneumonia,” an ailment created by breathing in constant clouds of black dust. These unfortunate families were forced to leave their homes and farms at the height of the Great Depression, compounding an already tenuous economic situation. By 1933 nearly 12 million people in the United States were unemployed, making jobs scarce in most areas of the country. Upward of 200,000 of these displaced people (frequently collectively labeled “Okies,” regardless of whether they were Oklahomans) undertook the long trek to California, which experienced an influx of new residents second only to the Gold Rush.

Agricultural areas of California, particularly the San Fernando and San Joaquin valleys, had weathered the early part of the Great Depression better than other parts of the country. Jobs remained and wages were rising with demand for pickers in the state’s orange, carrot, grape, lettuce, walnut, and cotton crops. Agricultural workers were able to demand fair treatment and union recognition—in October 1933 striking cotton workers in the San Joaquin Valley received recognition for their union and a 25-percent raise. The great influx of migrants (many valley towns saw a population increase of 50 percent by 1938), however, quickly overwhelmed the agricultural labor force, creating strife between the union workers and the desperate new transplants, who did not join the unions and were willing to work for less. The Dust Bowl migrants displaced Mexican and Filipino temporary workers—before the Great Depression, only 20 percent of migrant workers were white, but by 1936 the workforce was 85 percent white—changing the growing areas economically, politically, and culturally. As tensions rose between the native populations and the migrants, the new settlers were treated with either derision or stereotyped as backward others.

Cultural impact and response

Depictions of the “Okies” in popular culture and mainstream media aimed to provide some sympathy for the struggling migrants, depicting their deep suffering and simple-folk resilience. The work of three artists is closely associated with the migrants and their struggles: singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie, novelist John Steinbeck, and the documentary photographer Dorothea Lange, who photographed migrants for the federal government’s Resettlement Administration.

Woody Guthrie knew firsthand the tribulations of the “Okies.” An Oklahoma native, Guthrie had joined the parade of those headed west in search of work and was living in Pampa, Texas, when “Black Sunday” struck. He dramatized his experience that day in his song “Dusty Old Dust (So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh),” and the migrants’ plight was characterized in songs such as “Dust Bowl Refugee” and “Do Re Mi.” Guthrie released these songs on the album Dust Bowl Ballads in 1940, which also included a two-part song dedicated to the fictional Tom Joad, the protagonist of John Steinbeck’s Dust Bowl novel, The Grapes of Wrath.

The migrant experience was perhaps most famously depicted by Steinbeck in his novel, published in 1939. The work follows the Joad family, led by Tom Joad, and Jim Casy, a former preacher, as they migrate from Oklahoma to California, enticed by handbills advertising farm-labor jobs. The migrants are warned that the jobs that they are seeking are illusory, and when they arrive in California, they find that their trials are far from over. In a migrant encampment it is revealed that jobs are scarce, pay is poor, and migrant families are starving to death. The novel’s depiction of conflict between union and nonunion workers mirrored the actual struggles in California’s agricultural industry. The novel explores themes of family, community, and the battle to maintain dignity in the face of adversity.

During the early years of the Great Depression, Dorothea Lange began to photograph unemployed men wandering in the streets of San Francisco, starkly depicting their desperation. Her photographs received immediate recognition from the public and led to a commission in 1935 from the federal Resettlement Administration (later called the Farm Security Administration [FSA]). The latter agency, established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, hoped that Lange’s powerful images would bring the conditions of the rural poor to the public’s attention. Her photographs of migrant workers, with whom she lived for some time, were often presented with captions featuring the words of the workers themselves. Her most famous portrait, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936), came from a series of photographs taken of migrant pea-picker Florence Owens Thompson and her children, and it was regarded as the iconic representation of the agency’s agenda.

Expansion of federal authority

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U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933, and immediately the federal government took action to alleviate Americans’ suffering during the Great Depression. As part of a package of sweeping domestic programs—the New Deal—the administration established key relief agencies and reforms in the areas of industry, finance, labor, and housing. Agencies tasked with agricultural policy and support of those directly affected in the Dust Bowl areas included, but were not limited to, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), Works Progress Administration (WPA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Farm Security Administration (FSA), and Soil Conservation Service (SCS). New Dealers believed that soil erosion of the Great Plains could be arrested through a package of federal programs that would educate farmers on the best conservation practices, purchase and rehabilitate “blow hazards,” consolidate farms for efficiencies in soil conservation, and restore grasslands through reseeding projects. The programs ultimately met with success: The wind erosion was gradually halted with federal aid. Windbreaks known as shelterbelts—swaths of trees that protect soil and crops from wind—were planted, and much of the grassland was restored. By the early 1940s the area had largely recovered.

The following is a timeline of some of the milestones and most impactful federal actions of the Dust Bowl period:

• May 12, 1933: The passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) provides immediate economic relief to farmers by reducing surpluses of agricultural products to encourage prices to rise back to pre-World War I levels and provide sustainable incomes for farmers. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration is created to oversee the program and distribute subsidies and a national income to farmers as emergency relief. The act represents a major expansion of the federal government’s role in land management.
• May 12, 1933: The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act creates local credit banks and associations to support farmers. The federal government allocates $200 million to refinance farm mortgages and prevent foreclosures.
• May 31, 1933: The establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) creates conservation jobs—planting trees, maintaining roads and trails, and restoring agricultural topsoil—for unemployed men. At its largest, the corps employs 500,000 men and provides work for more than 3 million during its nine-year tenure.
• June 16, 1933: The passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act authorizes a number of public works projects, including soil erosion prevention activities.
• June 18, 1933: The CCC opens its first soil erosion camp in Clayton County, Alabama.
• September 1933: The Department of the Interior’s Soil Erosion Service (SES) is created. The SES creates demonstration projects in erosion areas to introduce conservation projects to farmers and provide them with public jobs such as building ponds and reservoirs and planting trees.
• Fall 1933: The first drought funds are released—the first direct federal intervention in response to drought conditions in the Great Plains.
• December 28, 1933: The Submarginal Land Purchase Program begins. The Public Works Administration transfers $25 million to the Federal Relief Administration for the purchase of submarginal lands (lands severely eroded and not appropriate for cultivation). The submarginal purchasing program moves to the Land Policy Section of the AAA in February 1934.
• January 15, 1935: The Drought Relief Service is established. The agency coordinates the federal drought response, purchases cattle, distributes food aid, and stabilizes the farm economy.
• March 19, 1935: The first tree in the Shelterbelt Project is planted. Officially the Prairie States Forest Project, Shelterbelt is a joint project between the U.S. Forest Service, the WPA, and the CCC to plant trees from Canada to Texas. From 1935 to 1942, workers plant over 200 million seedlings to create over 18,000 miles (28,968 km) of windbreaks to reduce soil erosion.
• March 21, 1935: A dust storm comes to the aid of Hugh Bennett, director of the Soil Erosion Service. While a congressional subcommittee decides on funding for a permanent soil conservation service, a massive dust storm passes over Washington, D.C., allowing committee members to see firsthand the extent of the erosion problem. The bill passes on April 15 and becomes the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act.
• April 8, 1935: The Emergency Relief Appropriation Act provides $525 million in federal funds for drought relief.
• April 14, 1935: Black Sunday occurs.
• April 27, 1935: President Roosevelt signs the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act. The act establishes the Soil Conservation Service in the Department of Agriculture, replacing the Department of the Interior’s Soil Erosion Service, and promotes and pays farmers to implement a variety of conservation techniques, including contour plowing, strip cropping, terracing, crop rotation, and the planting of cover crops. It also develops soil conservation districts for local enforcement of national guidelines and best practices.
• April 30, 1935: Executive Order 7027 establishes the Resettlement Administration to approve resettlement projects for destitute and low-income families, administer approved conservation projects, including those related to soil erosion and reforestation, and authorize loans under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act for farmers to purchase land and equipment. The Resettlement Administration’s Division of Land Utilization assumes responsibility for administration of the work previously managed by AAA.
• December 1935: The CCC proclaims that there are 501 soil conservation camps operating in 39 states.
• August 1936: It is reported that 21 percent of all rural families in the Great Plains drought area are receiving some form of federal emergency relief.
• October 31, 1936: More than 346,000 people are enrolled in the CCC, 13 percent of whom are from the Great Plains drought areas.
• September 1, 1937: The Farm Security Administration replaces the Resettlement Administration and continues its assistance to poor and destitute farmers.
• 1938: Even as drought conditions continue, conservation practices show a 65 percent reduction in soil erosion.
• 1941: This marks the last year of widespread dust storms and the end of the Dust Bowl.