Free Essays on The Dust Bowl

The 1930’s Dust Bowl The Dust Bowl of the 1930’s took place in the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States. While it lasted for merely a decade, its extreme conditions and impacts still affects people today. Numerous causes attributed to the beginnings of the massive and destructive Dust Bowl. Overproduction of wheat served as the storm’s main cause, over 12 million bushels of wheat existed in the United States. In 1915 3,000 tractors existed in the entire state of Kansas later, by 1930 the tractor quantity grew to 60,000 (Dustbowl np). Yearly, the farmers planted wheat on the same soil without thinking of any long-lasting damage done. Over plowed, the millions of acres of grasslands in the Great Plains turned the once nutritious soil into a fine unprotected dust (Bonnifield np). Eventually at the end of 1931, extreme droughts began. The lack of rainfall and extreme winds developed into â€Å"black blizzards†, where a wall of dust and smoke turns midday into night. Life turned into a struggle for almost all families located in the southern Great Plains, especially farmers (Bonnifield np). Children began to wear facemasks to serve as protection from the pungent smoke and women strung wet sheets over windows to stop the dust and dirt. A mass migration of families began, "Okies and Arkies" traveled west to California with their families, desperately searching for work. Farmers tried desperately to plant, but without water and nutritious soil, the windstorms swept their crops away. John Steinbeck accurately sums up the migration of the dustbowl in the Grapes of Wrath on page 317, "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, carav ans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless... Free Essays on The Dust Bowl Free Essays on The Dust Bowl The 1930’s Dust Bowl The Dust Bowl of the 1930’s took place in the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States. While it lasted for merely a decade, its extreme conditions and impacts still affects people today. Numerous causes attributed to the beginnings of the massive and destructive Dust Bowl. Overproduction of wheat served as the storm’s main cause, over 12 million bushels of wheat existed in the United States. In 1915 3,000 tractors existed in the entire state of Kansas later, by 1930 the tractor quantity grew to 60,000 (Dustbowl np). Yearly, the farmers planted wheat on the same soil without thinking of any long-lasting damage done. Over plowed, the millions of acres of grasslands in the Great Plains turned the once nutritious soil into a fine unprotected dust (Bonnifield np). Eventually at the end of 1931, extreme droughts began. The lack of rainfall and extreme winds developed into â€Å"black blizzards†, where a wall of dust and smoke turns midday into night. Life turned into a struggle for almost all families located in the southern Great Plains, especially farmers (Bonnifield np). Children began to wear facemasks to serve as protection from the pungent smoke and women strung wet sheets over windows to stop the dust and dirt. A mass migration of families began, "Okies and Arkies" traveled west to California with their families, desperately searching for work. Farmers tried desperately to plant, but without water and nutritious soil, the windstorms swept their crops away. John Steinbeck accurately sums up the migration of the dustbowl in the Grapes of Wrath on page 317, "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, carav ans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless... Free Essays on The Dust Bowl In the early 1900's, times were hard for people. Recovering from the first world war, where an overproduction of goods led to an extreme surplus of goods. This caused prices on goods fall dramatically. This was the beginning of the Great Depression. Contrary to it’s name, the Great Depression wasn’t really all that Great. America was poverty-stricken, and suffering. There was a shortage of food, money, and everything else needed to make a living, and provide for a family. To make any money, farmers had to produce more and more crops to survive at the same rate as they were before the United States entered the war. This led to the extreme use of, and over producing on the land. All the grasslands were plowed to make way for more crops. The rich, fertile soil of the Great Plains region was destroyed. These elements when added to the fact that during the late 1920's and throughout the 1930's, the United States Great Plains Region was an era plagued by scorching droughts, and heavy but short rainy seasons. During the winter, the soil just washed away without any plant roots to provide a foundation. When the Summer months came, the Central region of the United States recieved so little rain. The winds would come across the plains, and just pick up the once-fertile top soil and blows it up and into the atmosphere. These winds would pick up so much dust that there were opaque clouds of it that hung in the sky for days at a time. Called â€Å"Black Blizzards† the dust would then be blown around by the westerly winds that average a constant 15 miles per hour. As it settled back down to the barren earth, it would cover everything in layers and drifts just like it would in a snowstorm. This included the crops of the determined farmers who had worked so hard for the harvest. The dust would blow for days at a time. The dust would seep into the homes of people and create layers of dust upon everything. Several people actually died from ...