DIY Homeschooler

On May 9, 1934, the Great Plains region was hit by a severe two-day dust storm. Dust storms had been occurring for several years already, but this one garnered national attention when the cloud moved eastward to the coast, leaving 12 million pounds of dust behind in Chicago and on May 11 obscuring the Capitol and the Statue of Liberty from view. The Dust Bowl was on.

The Dirty Thirties

The Dust Bowl began with the onset of a particularly severe drought across the Midwest and the southern Great Plains in 1930. Large dust storms began in 1931 and continued for the next few years. Another massive storm occurred on what became known as Black Sunday, April 14, 1935, prompting the Associated Press to coin the term “Dust Bowl.”

With each storm, loose topsoil was swept away, leaving the soil underneath exposed to be dug out by the relentless winds. The result was large, dark clouds that could, as in the case of the 1934 dust storm, reach as high as 2 miles into the air and that blotted out the sun for days. Particles of dust drifted over fences and farm implements and worked their way into every crack of even the best constructed homes. As the particles rubbed together in the air, they built up static charges until sparks jumped between people shaking hands.

There was a considerable amount of danger involved in these dust storms. Motorists were imperiled when the static discharges shorted out their engines. Breathing the air caused a sometimes fatal condition termed “dust pneumonia.” By 1934, an estimated 35 million acres of farmland were deemed to have been ruined by erosion, leaving some farmers with no way to support their families except to move out.

The Federal Response

Even before the May 1934 dust storm, government officials, guided by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, were already implementing plans and programs to address the situation in the Great Plains. Crop prices had crashed at the end of World War I, leaving many farmers in a state of financial crisis. Matters had only been exacerbated by the Great Depression and the onset of drought and dust.

The federal aid programs tended to serve two stated objectives:

• Provide relief to struggling farmers.
• Implement conservation practices that would repair damaged land.

Numerous relief projects were implemented. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, which offered farmers subsidies for leaving cropland fallow, is one of the best known, but there were others. For instance, the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation purchased livestock and salvaged the meat for public distribution. Another example is the Prairie States Forestry Project, which employed farmers to plant trees as windbreaks in the Great Plains.

Many of the programs met with rather mixed success. Some were immensely unpopular. In one such case, animals were shot and buried, leading to a protest over the waste of food at a time when people were starving. Other relief efforts were regularly abused by the farmers themselves—fudging records to draw a subsidy on land still actively cropped. Still other programs have had effects that last to the present day, such as the conversion of damaged cropland to drought-hardy grasses, Cimarron National Grassland in southwestern Kansas being a prime remaining example.

Fleeing the Dust Bowl

Although the United States Department of Agriculture estimated that farm income increased 50% between 1932 and 1935, with 25% of that increase taking the form of federal payments, an estimated 2.5 million people nevertheless fled the Great Plains by 1940. In particular, hard-hit Oklahoma suffered a mass evacuation, with roughly 440,000 leaving the state to find hope someplace else. These migrants and their plight were immortalized by author John Steinbeck. Ever since students have pictured them living in crowded shanties and tents in California camps, despondently waiting for low-wage seasonal jobs picking produce.

While this bleak picture of the life of the fleeing farmers has basis in fact, the scene does not capture the entire situation. Many refugees did not travel as far as California, but found new lives in the states surrounding the Dust Bowl region. Furthermore, roughly three quarters of the regional farmers are believed to have remained on their farms.

That said, a trend began toward the consolidation of farms in the Midwest and Great Plains, a trend that has continued into the present. Likewise, another lasting trend was a move toward soil-conserving farming practices such as no-till and reduced tillage.

What Caused the Dust Bowl?

Drought was no new phenomenon in the Great Plains region. The Dust Bowl coincided with regular drought cycles. But what made this particular drought so catastrophic?

Part of the answer may lie in the farming practices of the time. In the early 1900s, a new method of farming known as “dry farming” was enthusiastically promoted to farmers as the key to making even desert regions “blossom as the rose.” The particular facet of the dry farming system that was most heavily emphasized and practiced was the dust mulch. Capillary action tends to pull moisture out of the soil. It was thought that the way to keep moisture in the soil would be to plow thoroughly and cultivate regularly to create a dust mulch. This mulch was expected to serve as a barrier between the capillary structure of the soil and the outside air, thus preventing evaporation.

The problem was that those exceedingly popular dust mulches tended to be remarkably short-lived in dry, windy weather. This, coupled with the fact that millions of acres of prairie had previously been plowed under the World War I mantra of “Food Will Win the War,” meant that the Midwest and Great Plains regions were ripe for massive dust storms.

Could these areas be prone to another, similar event in the near future? We are less than a decade away from the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Dust Bowl. Certainly another major cyclical drought would not be unusual. But there is reason to think that agricultural techniques can make all the difference between a major catastrophe and a normal disturbance. It is possible that ecosystems could be left stronger than they were before.

Suggestions

Ask your students to one or more of the following: (resources below will help)

• Create a timeline of the events of the Dust Bowl.
• Make a list of the impacts of the Dust Bowl.
• Analyze the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. What was it meant to do? What were the consequences?
• Choose one state from the migration map resources below to follow. Show the path of migrations from that state.
• Describe “dry farming.”
• Take a side trip to Kansas.

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Further Investigation

Dust Bowl
Overview from the Texas State Historical Society.

The Dust Bowl Years
Firsthand accounts from the Nebraska Historical Society.

Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933
Full text for older students.

Dust Bowl Photos
From USDA.

Activities

The Dust Bowl
Map and history activities for wrapping up. Click on your state for more.

Mapping the Dust Bowl Migration
Draw your own map using this data from the University of Washington.

Units and Lesson Plans

Learning about the Great Depression and Dust Bowl through Primary
Sources
Lesson plan from the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Out of the Dust
Lesson plan from the Library of Congress.

Soil: A Unit Study
Soil is a complex ecosystem, a place where geology, chemistry, and biology (along with a few other sciences) meet. Learn more about soil (and dust) in our free unit!

Bread: A Unit Study
On July 7, 1928, the first sliced bread was sold. The Dust Bowl did in with the wheat harvest in states like Kansas.

Printables and Notebooking Pages

Illustration of Dust Bowl Region
Map for notebook.

These units have been created specifically with do-it-yourself (DIY) homeschoolers in mind: those that don’t want a lot of hand-holding. If this doesn’t describe your need, you might prefer a few of these pre-planned units. For those brave souls who enjoy pulling things together themselves, there are many ways to use these resources!