Dust Bowl Essay

Dust Bowl Thesis
Thesis: People's actions caused the Dust Bowl.
The reasons why the people had started the madness. People's actions caused the Dust Bowl. The
Dust Bowl left people with nothing at the time. It also killed lots of people around the areas of the
Dust Bowl."Most early settlers used the land for livestock grazing until agricultural mechanization
combined with high grain prices during World War I." (Dust Bowl) People wanted even more when
they should have stopped sooner. "By 1941 much of the land was rehabilitated, but the region
repeated its mistakes during World War II as farmers again plowed up grassland to plant wheat
when grain prices rose." (Dust Bowl) The land was improving a little bit, but the people made the
same mistake again. " Lured by a land lush with shrubs, grasses, and soil so rich it looked like
chocolate, the farmers didn't realize that what they were witnessing."(Introduction, Surviving The
Dust Bowl) The...show more content...
"But in the summer of 1931, the rains disappeared. Crops withered and died. The land became
parched, the winds picked up–and the dust storms began." (Introduction, Surviving The Dust
Bowl)The aftermath of the Dust Bowl was terrible. Everything was destroyed and there was pretty
much nothing left. "They rolled in without warning, blotting out the sun and casting entire towns
into darkness. Afterward, there was dust everywhere–in food, in water, in the lungs of animals and
people."(Introduction, Surviving The Dust Bowl) The Dust Bowl had rolled in without any warning
or people knowing anything at all.
Thesis: Most important fact. Leave the reader with something to think about.
People's actions caused the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl had made lots of people suffer and lead to the
Great Depression. In areas like Oklahoma, they've had things like this, but not even close to as bad.
If people were more cautious, would it have helped a lot more or a lot
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Dust Bowl History
The Dust bowl used to be a desert in western Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New
Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas,.The dust bowl had dry and cracked land because of the
drought,and of the lack of rainfall.The dust bowl was at the end of the great depression.The dust
bowl was also known as the dirty thirties.
The Dust bowl started in the 1930s,and lasted about a decade. The drought came in 3 waves; 1934,
1936, and 1940. The dust bowl stated in the 1930–1940.In
Oklahoma, the Panhandle area was hit hardest by the drought.
The sand and dirt went 2 miles high in the dust bowl.6 million pigs were slaughtered because of the
food that wasn't growing. beans,pork chops,etc.The
Dust bowl was only about 150,00 miles long across 2ВЅ states and country sides.
The

Essay On The Dust Bowl
Natural disasters can cause massive damage, but few realize that many barely last a few days. If so
much can be done in such a minute amount of time, imagine what a decade would do. The dust
bowl was a weather event that lasted for the entirety of an eight–year drought and lingered for
multiple years after. The result: Economic devastation for the agriculture of the area. Thedust bowl
was a large contributor to agriculture's role in the great depression and defines how we approach
environmental protection today.
The timeline of the dustbowl characterizes the fall of agriculture during the late 1920s, primarily the
area in and surrounding the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl was created by a disruption in the areas
natural balance. "With the crops and native vegetation gone, there was nothing to hold the topsoil
to the ground" ("Dust Bowl and" 30). Agricultural expansion and dry farming techniques caused
mass plowing and allowed little of the land to go fallow. With so little of the deeply rooted grass
remaining in the Great Plains, all it took was an extended dry season to make the land grow dry and
brittle. When most of the land had been enveloped by the grass dust storms weren't even a yearly
occurrence, but with the exponentiation of exposed land, the winds had the potential to erode entire
acres. This manmade natural disaster consumed such a large amount of the South's agriculture that it
had repercussions on the national level. The Dust Bowl was a "97–million–acre section

How Did The Dust Bowl Affect Health
The Dust Bowl was one of the worst economic and tragic events of the 20th century. The Dust Bowl
negatively affected people who lived there in a personal way. Some of them included how badly it
had affected the children living in that time, how it had affected families health, and how badly it
affected the economy causing a mass corruption.
The Dust Bowl affected children in a big way by ruining their health, and causing them to see
extricating things. "The children of the Dust Bowl saw things that no one, no matter what their age,
should see. And they are as capable as any witness of telling those things with devastating
directness."(Williford) This analyzes that the children had seen things that in today's life, other
children could not handle...show more content...
This is something that leads up to the dust bowl from happening. "Dry land farming on the Great
Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing
also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually, the land was laid bare, and significant
environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural elements, the strong winds of the region
were particularly devastating."("The Dust Bowl") What it is explaining is that all the dust that
gathered up by the farms and plantations, was a cause to the dust bowl since farmers had left their
productivity, of growing their crops, behind. Most of the families had been their for centuries, so it
was really hard for them to leave most of their homes and natural elements behind as they tried to
travel north. Although farms and industries were forced to plant in the dry plain, it caused a mass
corruption in almost every state in the United States. Having to be forced to plant caused a mass
corruption after the dust bowl. Cattle died and farmers had to give up their land and find somewhere
else to live, this analyzes that farmers were uncomfortable with working in these

Dust Bowl Dbq Essay
In the early 1930s through the 1936, a massive event called the Dust Bowl occurred also known as
the Dirty Thirties, dramatically affected areas within Oklahoma, Kansas, and Northern Texas due to
extensive windstorms. This event forced numerous people to evacuate their hometowns. The Dust
Bowl had a significant impact on society, it caused farmers to have no control of their agriculture
because of the dried up land. Once the land dried up there was no way to renovate or replace the
soil. This dilemma lead to more citizens to depend on the government for help, financially.
According to Document A, Caroline Henderson mentions how the Dust Bowl has caused people to
evade the town due to the people wanting to protect their children's instead of

Dust Bowl Dbq Essay
There were many many reasons why the Dust Bowl came about. I chose the three main reasons
for the cause of the Dust Bowl. In the early 1930Е› 300 dust storms called The Dust Bowl were
huge storms that hurt Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. The land in most of
these states were all grassless they plowed all the land so that they can plant crops. One of the
reasons why the Dust Bowl came about was due to the drought the United States was having. This
meant there was no rain in the prairies. According to High Plains Regional Climate, University of
Nebraska, in document E, the minimal amount of rainfall in inches per year that is needed to have
an optimal harvest is 20 inches. Also in document E is the amount of rainfall between 1931 – 1940
was between 9 to 20 inches of rainfall. This obviously directly impacted the Dust Bowl because all
of the farming halted due to the lack of rainfall during the Dust Bowl period....show more content...
Farming wheat was a huge factor. The reason why is because when people farmed they pulled all
the grass out and planted wheat. Once it was harvested it left all of the topsoil open for the wind to
blow it all away. In document B it says ВЁGrass is what counts. It's what saves us all – far as we get
saved.... Grass is what holds the earth together.ВЁ This connects perfectly with the farmers ripping
all the grass out and planting wheat. When farmers took out the grass they obviously took out the
roots and the roots is what held all the dirt in

Dust Bowl Essay
The Dust Bowl was a treacherous storm, which occurred in the 1930's, that affected the midwestern
people, for example the farmers, and which taught us new technologies and methods of farming. As
John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were
drawn west– from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families,
tribes, dusted out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless – restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do – to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut –
anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place
...show more content...
But to the credit of the residents of the Dust Bowl, they shouldered their task and carried on. The
people of the region made it because they knew how to take the everyday practical things, which
had been used for years and adapt them to meet the crisis. Finding a way to make do or do
differently was a way of life for the pioneers who had come to the region only a short time earlier.
When they arrived there were no houses, wells, cars, telephones or fields. Times were hard when
the land was settled, and the people knew how to live and grow in difficult periods. In 1934–1936
the actual Dust Bowl happened. This was when the massive and deadly storms hit the prosper and
growing Midwest Panhandle. In 1936, a more severe storm spread out of the plains and across most
of the nation. The drought years were followed with record breaking heavy rains, blizzards,
tornadoes and floods. In September 1930, it rained over five inches in a very short time in the
Oklahoma Panhandle. The flooding in Oklahoma was accompanied by a dirt storm, which damaged
several small buildings and other farm structures. Later that year, the regions were hit again by a
strong dirt storm from the southwest until the winds gave way to a blizzard from the north.
After the blizzards in winter 1930–1931, the drought began. First the northern plains were hit by the
dry spell, but by July the southern plains were in the drought. It was not until late September that

"We watched as the storm swallowed the light. The sky turned from blue to black, night descended
in an instant and the dust was on us...Dust lay two feet deep in ripply waves across the parlor floor,
dust blanketed the cookstove, the icebox, the kitchen chairs, everything deep in dust." –Karen
Hesse's Diary, April, 1935 (Dust Bowl Diary Entries). In the 1930s, a phenomenon called the Dust
Bowl swept the people of the Great Plains off their feet. This paper defines the Dust Bowl and its
impact on the US economy and American citizens.
Though most everyone has heard of the Dust Bowl, many people don't actually know what it is.
"When rain stopped falling in the Midwest, farm fields began to dry up" (The Dust Bowl). Much of
the nation's crops couldn't grow, causing major economic struggle. "The Homestead Act of 1862,
which provided settlers with 160 acres of public land, was followed by the Kinkaid Act of 1904
and the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909" (Dust Bowl). This caused many inexperienced farmers
to jump on this easy start of a career. Because of this, farmers in the Midwest had practiced
atrocious land management for years. This included over plowing the land and using the same
crops year after year. In this way, lots of fertile soil had gotten lost. This helped windstorms gather
topsoil from the land, and whip it into huge clouds; dust storms. Hot, dry, and windy, almost the
entire middle section of the United States was directly affected. The states affected were South

What Caused The Dust Bowl? Essay
What Caused the Dust Bowl?
One of America's most beloved books is John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The book portrays
a family, the Joads, who leave Oklahoma and move to California in search of a more prosperous
life. Steinbeck's book garnered acclaim both from critics and from the American public. The story
struck a chord with the American people because Steinbeck truly captured the angst and heartbreak
of those directly impacted by the Dust Bowl disaster. To truly comprehend the havoc the Dust Bowl
wreaked, one must first understand how and why the Dust Bowl took place and who it affected the
most. The Dust Bowl was the result of a conglomeration of weather, falling crop prices, and
government policies.
The Dust Bowl, a tragic era...show more content...
For example, in February much of the United States had recorded frigid temperatures and North
Dakota hit an all–time extreme record low of minus sixty degrees (Hutchinson, 35) . In contrast to
the high temperatures, in the summer of 1936 strong upper–atmosphere high pressure systems
locked over North America which caused very high temperatures. All but two states experienced
protracted temperatures in excess of 100 degrees. Seventy–five percent of those states experienced
temperatures that exceeded 110. The high for Kansas in 1936 was in Alton which reached 121
degrees in July. Conditions were so severe that federal officials warned that America's agricultural
belt was in real danger of being transformed into a desert. The heat wave cost $1 billion in crop
and livestock losses. On July 15th of 1936, the Chicago Tribune estimated that 1,000 people a day
were dying and continued at that pace for several days.
In addition to the extreme temperatures, lack of rain was also a major factor in the Dust Bowl. The
1934 drought was the most devastating in American history. In 1934, twenty–four states suffered
sufficiently from the drought. There was no significant amount of rain from 1930 to 1939. The
drought was so bad people started to believe they could produce rain. Tex Thorton, in Delhart
Texas, believed that if he set off explosions on the ground it would rattle the atmosphere and cause
it to rain. He was paid three hundred dollars to set off explosions, but

Essay on The Dust Bowl
GKE Task 1
A. Significant environmental /geographical factors that contributed to the development or expansion
of the United States:
1. The Dust Bowl
Farmers began to plow and plant wheat crops. When World War 1 began the massive wheat crops
helped feed many Americans that in another part of the country try where in the beginning of a
depression that was caused by the war. The wheat crops also helped feed numerous nations overseas.
A drought that began in the beginning of the 1930's persisted and was leading things in a very
negative direction. No matter the circumstances farmers kept on farming hoping the rain would soon
come back. In 1931 the rain just stopped and the farmers still kept trying to farm. Without adequate
...show more content...
B. One significant environmental or geographical factor that contributed to the development or
diffusion on one human society from:
Egypt's geographic characteristics that affect the development of human society were the Nile River.
The Nile River made the ability of a large population in a desert region. Also, the Nile would flood
bringing rich soil to the lower regions of the rivers course. The crops in this area did well and the
flooding helped set a steady schedule for planting and harvesting and because of this the societies
remained stable and had extra time to develop art and science in their culture. The people of Egypt
also had access to some of the largest quantities of stone such as granite. This began the
development and building of pyramids instead of mud buildings. The Nile River played a huge role
in the development of Egypt.
1. Cultural diffusion between Mesopotamia and Egypt.
The social and politically elite from Egypt sought exotic goods and items of symbolic
prestigiousness from India (Mesopotamia). For example: Mesopotamian cylinder seals and Afghan
Lapis Lazuli which were found in early Egyptian tombs. Not only was there trades of items but
there was trades of ideas. Egyptians imitated the Lapis Lazuli in their Egyptian Faience (ceramic of
glass). Due to the Lapis Lazuli being very rare and expensive the Egyptian felt they could benefit
from doing this. The Faience represents the first known

Dust Bowl Essay
According to answers.com, a dust bowl is a region reduced to aridity by drought and dust storms.
The best–known dust bowl is doubtless the one that hit the United States between 1933 and 1939.
One major cause of that Dust Bowl was severe droughts during the 1930's. The other cause was
capitalism. Over–farming and grazing in order to achieve high profits killed of much of the plain's
grassland and when winds approached, nothing was there to hold the devastated soil on the ground.
The Dust Bowl affected the Great Plains which consist of parts of the U.S. states of Colorado,
Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and
Wyoming. Storms also reached the East Coast of the United States. The Dust Bowl...show more
content...
With youth and ambition ground into the very dust itself, I can only drift with the tide."
Lawrence Svobida most likely joined the Dust Bowl exodus, the largest migration in American
history. By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states; of those, 200,000 moved to
California. Arriving in California, the migrants were faced with a life almost as difficult as the one
they had left.
Many California farms were corporate–owned. They were larger, and more modernized that those of
the southern plains, and the crops were unfamiliar. Many farmers from the Great Plains ended up
picking cotton and grapes for wages as low as 0.75 $ a day.
Other asylums included Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and New Mexico. The vast majority of Dust
Bowl migrants stayed on the West Coast permanently.
The Dust Bowl also inspired painters and other artists. One of the best–known artists in connection
with the Dust Bowl is Alexandre Hogue. His picture's name is simply "Dust Bowl".
An artist who compares the Dust Bowl to nowadays' air pollution is Heather Watts. Her best known
picture is the "New Dustbowl Blues".
Dorothea Lange became a well–known photographer with pictures of the Dust Bowl. According to
Garland 2003 her photography obtained government relief for Dust Bowl migrants because she
"visually demonstrated the hunger, poverty, hardship, and the plight of the migrants."
Amongst

The Dust Bowl was a difficult time that caused people to lose their lives or to have difficult ones.
People got diseases, others lost everything they had, and kids didn't get to grow up normal. One of
these kids was Timothy Johnson. One day, he and his brothers were out when their mom called
them in, as she did a loud sound crashed through their trees. They heard the stories of many dust
storms forming but Timothy hadn't known how they would affect his life. They watched as dust
clouded around them, they couldn't even see the tree Timothy and his brothers had played by. Days
later after the first storm, Timothy went back to school and talked about it with his friends. A few
days later at school another one hit, and all the kids had the realization of what was happening.
About 6 months later kids would wear masks and many had gotten illnesses from what was now
know as the Dust Bowl. Timothy grew up a lot during the Dust Bowl, he went through many
hardships and learned what to do to help out his family. After, he wrote a documentary about it later
becoming famous for the perfect way he portrayed it. Yet the story of Tim was only one of many
caused by the Dust Bowl, an awful time that destroyed many lives.
The Dust Bowl was a dark and difficult part of life for people of the 1930's. The Dust Bowl spread
many diseases resulting in many people losing their lives. English professor, Cary Nelson,
explained "The simplest acts of life, breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk, were

Dust Bowl Essay

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