What caused the US dust bowl? The dust bowl was caused by a combination of factors including bad farming practices, drought, high winds, and the economy. The dust bowl was named in 1935 by a reporter called Robert Geiger, but it was a phenomenon that had started in 1930, with causes going back long before that.
The dust bowl occurred in the Great Plains area of the United States. This is the flat part of the US that runs down from Canada into Texas. It is bordered by mountains on each side. The Great Plains is unusual in the fact that it has almost no trees, which means there is nothing to stop the strong winds. There are no trees because the whole area is very prone to droughts. Grasses can cope with dry periods, but trees need a regular water supply. Over millions of years, a grass called buffalograss has evolved to grow on the plains. It is very hardy, and it has extremely strong roots that can reach down to the water under the ground. These roots help to anchor the grasses when the winds blow and that also holds the soil in place. Buffalograss is so called because buffalo eat it, although the animals that lived on the Great Plains were actually bison. The Great Plains were home to possibly 60 million bison. So, the Great Plains were very windy, prone to droughts, and the only vegetation that could survive there were very strong grasses that also held the soil together. This was not an area conducive to agriculture.
In the late 19th century, all of the states across the continental US had become states and the country stretched from the East coast to the West coast. However, most of the population lived on the coasts and not the middle. A lot of Native Americans still lived on the Great Plains, hunting bison. The US government thought that the best way to control this area was to remove the Native Americans and have more Americans move there. They did this in two ways. Firstly, they used the US army to kill millions of bison to starve the Native Americans. The bison was almost extinct by 1890. Secondly, they encouraged a lot of people to move to the area by selling land very cheaply. The fact that the land was not good for agriculture was never revealed. The land agents actually went so far as to lie and say things were improving and the rain was increasing.
A lot of people moved to the Great Plains throughout the latter 19th century and the early 20th century. They were mostly poor people or immigrants from Europe. Some raised pigs and other crops, but the majority of people planted wheat. They were told that “rain follows the plough” and were encouraged to dig up the buffalograss to let more rain get into the soil. If it hadn’t been for the climate and the price of wheat in the early days, people might have moved on and the dust bowl might not have happened. As it was, for the first couple of decades, the weather was good and there was more rain than usual. Also, World War 1 came about and the price of wheat shot up. Poor people who had moved to the area were suddenly making a living. They used this money to buy and plough up more land. They ploughed millions and millions of acres to plant mostly wheat. They were helped by a sudden jump in the technology available to farmers. They could use machines, and they could plough twenty-four hours a day.
In 1930 the first of four droughts came. The droughts would last until 1939. All the crops died, and nothing would grow. This was coupled with rapidly shrinking wheat prices. Farmers had very little to sell, and what they could sell didn’t get them enough money. Most farmers borrowed against the harvest to buy seeds and equipment. With no money, they couldn’t pay their loans. The economic situation became desperate. After a few years, people started to migrate out of the area to try to find jobs. About 2.5 million left altogether. The problem was, they were trying to find work in the middle of the Great Depression and there was none.
The poverty and hardship were obviously terrible, but it is the dust storms that this era is remembered for and why it was called the dust bowl. The farmers had ploughed up all of the buffalograss that held the soil together during the droughts. They planted wheat, but when that died in the first drought, there was nothing to keep the soil down and it was picked up by the wind. The strong winds blew the dirt all over the place and it became like a fog of dirt. There were also enormous storms that were as high as a couple of kms and made the day like night. These dust storms rapidly became worse because the swirling dirt creates static electricity, which attracts more dirt. People couldn’t go outside, they couldn’t grow anything, and they sometimes couldn’t even breathe. Dirt would get in through any crack in a building and most people just lived in huts with a lot of holes. People developed dust pneumonia, and several thousand people died. The largest storm blew all the way to Washington D.C., which finally got the problem noticed.
Franklin Roosevelt tried to help with his new deal, but as nothing could be grown in the area, there was no direct solution. The Second World War saved many of the people because the American economy was boosted. Roosevelt had 200 million trees planted as a wind break and to hold the soil down. He also introduced agricultural education programs, to teach farmers how to look after the soil. However, the rains only really came back in 1941 and there were more droughts to follow. Most of the problem was fixed, but there are still dust storms on the Great Plains even today. And this is what I learned today.
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Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouteloua_dactyloides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison
https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/dust-bowl
https://drought.unl.edu/dustbowl
https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4955
https://permies.com/t/170793/repair-Oklahoma-Dust-Bowl
https://www.science.org/content/article/dust-bowl-20-rising-great-plains-dust-levels-stir-concerns
Image By George Everett Marsh Jr. – File:Dust Storm Texas 1935.jpgNOAA, George E. Marsh Album, Historic C&GS Collection, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=144926823