The Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl was one of the worst droughts in history. It took place from 1929-1940 and then from 1946-1956. It affected Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, and sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. The tremendous weather ruined many farmers' crops, people's lives, it caused people to migrate to other areas and during this time the depression was going on which hurt the economy.

The Dust Bowl took place during the Great Depression while the economy was bad. Many people were out of jobs, money and food. Many of the businesses went bankrupt for reasons such as shortage of supplies and the cost to run things. Even though many farmers did not invest in stock market, the people who did were the consumers of their products. With no buyers of the farm produce and the crops not growing because of the water loss, the farmers had no income and no food to eat.

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English: A farmer's son in Cimarron County, Oklaho...

These droughts affected 150,000 square miles of land which caused many people to move to leave their home(Starr).

The farmers were affected the most by these tremendous droughts. All of the farmers' crops were ruined and their cattle were being killed one by one by starvation, and some farmers had to kill their cattle for food, and because they had no food to feed them. Once the cattle started to die the farmers were out of produce and meat to eat, and the little meat and crops they had to sell was being ruined by the sand storms. These sands storms were started by wind picking up loose top soil and swirling it around in the air, while it created dust clouds called "Black Blizzards" (Dust Bowl). It actually hurt to breathe because the dust penetrated everything. Young children and older people had the...