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Dust Bowl
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The Dust Bowl's Worst Day: Black Sunday, Rolla, Kansas, April 14, 1935 Map of the United States with the historic Dust Bowl region highlighted in orange, centered over parts of the southern Plains, including sections of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and Colorado. The map serves as a locator, showing the Dust Bowl area in relation to the rest of the country. American Progress, chromolithograph print, c. 1873 World War I poster showing soldiers charging over a snowy hill with rifles, above large red text reading They are giving all - Will you send them wheat? U.S. Food Administration. Dust Bowl era: Oklahoma, 1937 A massive dust storm approaches a small town street in Alma, Nebraska, March 1935; dark clouds loom over buildings and people walking near a storefront. Black Sunday: Kansas A massive dust storm looms over a row of houses and a farmhouse on the edge of Stratford, Texas, with people visible in the foreground, April 1935. Black Sunday: Colorado Massive dust storm engulfs the landscape near Beaver, Oklahoma, on April 14, 1935, with a dirt road leading toward a dark, towering cloud of dust.
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The Dust Bowl's Worst Day: Black Sunday, Rolla, Kansas, April 14, 1935
The Dust Bowl's Worst Day: Black Sunday, Rolla, Kansas, April 14, 1935

Dust Bowl

historic region, United States
Written by
Mindy Johnston
Mindy Spitzer Johnston is Managing Editor at Encyclopædia Britannica. 
Mindy Johnston
Fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
Last updated
•History

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...

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