Essay On The Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl: The Era of Destruction The 1920’s was a horrible time for all, especially those from the midwest, and those farmers now had to use new and improved methods involving machines and new revolutions to increase the speed and growth of their extravagant crops. But now the damage is done, because World War 1 is over. Most thought this destruction was at an end and only good was to come, but in 1931 things took a turn for the worst and more devastation piled on from an era known as the “Dirty Thirties”. “The most visible evidence of how dry the 1930s became was the dust storm” (Overmiller). This is also more greatly known as the Dust Bowl. “The Dust Bowl got its name after Black Sunday, April 14, 1935”. (Overmiller). And from then on farmers realized no new/advanced technology could get them through this devastation period. Since
It was way worse than that. Mile long dust winds piled through the north. “When the dust clouds appeared from the north, they rolled in like giant waves of black fog, thousands of feet high and miles across” (Franz). Winds 60 miles per hour combined with the dirt and erosion around it and created a massive storm making a blizzard of dusty smoke. The midwest had already been hit by these hardcore storms, but April 14, 1935, was the worst day of all. “More and more dust storms had been blowing up in the years leading up to that day. In 1932, 14 dust storms were recorded on the Plains. In 1933, there were 38 storms. By 1934, it was estimated that 100 million acres of farmland had lost all or most of the topsoil to the winds. By April 1935, there had been weeks of dust storms, but the cloud that appeared on the horizon that Sunday was the worst. Winds were clocked at 60 mph” (Overmiller). And that Sunday was the final load but it was the biggest of thm all completely wiping out everything, leaving absolutely nothing behind. And at that point the effect had become a completely new