the Dust Bowl

[Mishe Vanatta]

[Mishe Vanatta]

The impact of the Dust Bowl was felt all over the U.S. During the same April as Black Sunday, 1935, one of FDR's advisors, Hugh Hammond Bennett, was in Washington D.C. on his way to testify before Congress about the need for soil conservation legislation. A dust storm arrived in Washington all the way from the Great Plains. As a dusty gloom spread over the nation's capital and blotted out the sun, Bennett explained, "This, gentlemen, is what I have been talking about." Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act that same year.

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_02.html

[Mishe Vanatta]

But the drought years of the 1930s forced individual farmers and lawmakers at all levels of government to face fundamental questions. What kind of agriculture can be practiced in a semi-arid environment? And how can we restore land that farming practices had damaged and avoid damaging the land in the future?

The statistics tell the story.

Normally, the state of Nebraska averages around 20 inches of rainfall a year.
In 1930, Nebraska got 22 inches of rain, and the state's corn crop averaged 25 bushels per acre.
In 1934, Nebraska saw the driest year on record with only 14.5 inches of rainfall. The state's corn crop dropped even more to only 6.2 bushels per acre.
In other words, between 1930 and 1934 rainfall dropped 27.5 percent, and as a result corn crop yields dropped over 75 percent.

Those living on the Great Plains saw the effects of the drought first hand. LeRoy Hankel can tell you how his crops did each year during the Depression, even after all these years.

These dramatic effects caused the leaders of agricultural planning in the U.S. to consider fundamental changes in farming on the plains. The heads of all of the New Deal agricultural and relief agencies issued a "Report of the Great Plains Drought Area Committee" in August 1936.

In the report, they said that the dust bowl was caused not just by the dry weather but also by unwise farming practices. Earlier settlers plowed under the natural tall grasses that covered the plains and planted crops they had planted in the wetter East. When the drought came, the crops failed, the ground was uncovered and the incessant winds produced the dust storms.

Government planners wrote that periods of drought like the 1930s were likely to occur again and that "the agricultural economy of the Great Plains will become increasingly unstable and unsafe ... unless over-cropping, over-grazing and improper farm methods are prevented... The future of the region must depend, therefore, on the degree to which farming practices conform to natural conditions."

Helen Bolton (left) remembers how their corn was fine one day and dried out the next. She and her husband used their anticipated crop yields to buy a tractor. When the crops failed, they were in trouble. Birdie Farr (right) remembers when her husband's father lost his horse and cattle ranch in the Nebraska sand hills. With little rain, there was no grass in the pastures for livestock.

Farmers are optimistic. It's natural for them to push the limits, to try to raise a crop where crops haven't been raised before. But they can't control nature. They can't make it rain. And so the challenge is to find crops that are adapted to the specific region they live in, whether that's in the humid East or the dry places of the Plains and the West.

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_03.html

[Mishe Vanatta]

[Mishe Vanatta]

[Mishe Vanatta]

Bettie Gull, Dust Bowl Days & the Flood of 1935
By Zackary Schilz - McCook, NE
Grandson of Bettie

Bettie Gull lived with her parents, Bill and Fredella Hill and an older brother Bill on a farm between Oxford and Edison, Nebraska in Furnas County during the early 1930's. The farm was located along the Republican River; in fact, the house was less than one quarter of a mile from the river. She and her brother Bill attended a rural school, which was approximately six miles from their home.

They drove a horse and buggy to school and the brother fed and shed the horse on the school grounds where they attended school. Their home was a two-stories with a basement. It had no electricity so kerosene lamps were used for light. There was a wood-burning stove in the kitchen to cook on. There also was a floor furnace between the living room and the dining room, which produced some heat. In fact, when the baby pigs were born their father used to bring them in out of the cold and warm them up on a tarp over the floor furnace. The house was modern in that it had an indoor bathroom rather than an outhouse.

Some of the things they did for fun included ice-skating on the sandpits and the local lake, and swimming in the river. In the evenings they listened to the radio- such programs as Amos and Andy and Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. Family entertainment consisted of PTA meetings and lunches and card parties about once a month. Their father enjoyed going to meetings at the local Legion Club to visit with his World War I buddies once a month also.

They didn't suffer as much from the terrible dust bowl dirt storms down in the valley as much as those who lived on the divide. When the dirt would move and blow, the only room they could breathe in was the pantry because it only had one window and they would put wet towels around it.

The most vivid memory of this time for grandmother was the flood of 1935. She was five years old when that happened. It happened late in the evening after the children had gone to bed. There was a general ring on the party line telephone that high water was coming and to protect the livestock.

Their father left the house and went out to let the cows out of the pasture. While he was out there a wall of water drowned out his car so it would not start. He tried to get to a neighbor's house that was about a quarter of a mile from his home but was not able even to do that.

In the meantime, their mother had gone out to pick up her baby chicks, when a wall of water washed up over her. She was only able to get back to the house by holding onto a fence that ran from the chicken house to the home.

By this time, the children had heard noises down stairs and when they started down the stairs the water had already risen up the first two steps. Their mother came back and went upstairs with the children. In the meantime, their father had managed to climb a telephone pole and pulled himself along on the wires until he was across the road from their home. He told their mother he was afraid they were all going to drown and that he would rather drown trying to get to his family.

Somehow he managed to swim against the wall of water and got to a tree in the corner of the yard. There was a clothesline that was fastened to the tree he was in and the other end of the line was fastened to a tree by the house. Their father broke his end off the tree and tied it around his waist while their mother broke her end loose and fastened it to a bedstead, which she had pulled up to the window.

When their mother and the children pulled the father in, the water was level with the porch roof. Her father was chilled and shaking and there were sticks driven in his body from the force of the water.

The family was stranded in the house until after-noon of the next day. Her first memory of the next morning was looking and seeing nothing but muddy water and the tops of trees and buildings, and stock bawling and thrashing around. It was around noon of this day that rescuers swam horses down to the house and took the family out. At this time there were still people hanging in trees and calling for help and people trying to rescue them with boats.

The family was left with nothing. Their father had received a war bonus just before this, but he had invested it all in the stock and feed which, of course, was lost. They were offered a place to stay with the fellow who ran the local pool hall. Their mother had black hair and within three days it turned gray. Some people would say this couldn't be but she said she saw it happen.

Their mother spent days and days washing clothing that they had salvaged, in fact, one of the things she washed out every day were some quilt blocks she had made. These quilt blocks were later made into a quilt, which hangs in her present day home. Another thing, which was salvaged from the flood, was a treadle sewing machine that is also located in her home in McCook.

Following the flood their father walked the river for days looking for livestock. He found only one cow and a pony that belonged to his brother. In fact, the horse remained with the family for another ten years. There were people loading livestock into trucks to be sold whether they belonged to them or not. Actually they were just stealing from people who had just lost everything they owned.

During the time they lived in town their mother worked making potato chips for seventy-five cents a day while their dad earned $2.50 a day. They saved their money, (as much as they could) to rent another farm.

About two years after the flood the family moved to a farm near Holbrook on the divide (This was high ground). Here, grasshoppers and drought plagued them but they were nowhere near the river. Their father suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to a Veteran's Hospital.

Their mother was temporarily left on the farm to care for it and the children. They had very little food. There was no meat and they often ate ragweed that can be said to be similar to spinach. They would not take handouts. This was a proud family whose way of life was to not beg from others or to ask for relief. They accepted life as it was dealt them and did what they could without complaint.

In conclusion, life in the thirties was vastly different from the way we live today. Times were rough (especially for this family). They had no choice but to keep on going.
© Zackary Schilz, March 2000
 
www.buffalocommons.org/.../b_gull_1935.html

[Mishe Vanatta]

The Dust Bowl of the 1930's

 

Picture yourself standing in a field, not an ordinary field of grass and flowers, but a barren field of dust. You fix your eyes toward the horizon and a sigh comes over you as a dust storm rolls your way. This was life during the dust bowl of the 1930's.

 
---Black Blizzards was the name given to the one thousand foot high dust storms that overtook the Midwest during the Great Depression. It all started when farmers of the area in and around the panhandle of Texas abused the land with their poor farming techniques and with the destruction of the original buffalo grass by raplacing it with wheat crops. Failure to take proper care of the soil they were using resulted in the land losing moisture which made it vulnerable to wind erosion. Besides land being destroyed by farmers, the rest of the land in the area that was rich in grass was also destroyed by overgrazing of livestock. The combination of this and a major drought in the 1930's led to the tragic events of the Dust Bowl.

 The Damage
----As many as 50 million acres of land were destroyed by the effects of the Dust Bowl; another 50 million acres endangered. Dust storms carried millions of tons of dirt from one location to the next. Those caught in the middle of dust storms were left with either damaged lungs or death due to inhalation of dust in the air they were breathing. Even cows developed health problems and often died from eating dust coated grass which turned to fatal "mud balls" in their stomachs. High speed winds pushed grains of dust into things such as farm equipment, barns, and homes. Cars were damaged beyond repair because of sand and dust clogging up vital parts of the engine. A shovel was an important tool as shoveling sand out of houses and barns was a common ordeal during the Dust Bowl.

 
  Leaving the Dust Bowl
----The largest migration in American history was during this time period. Over 2.5 million people left the Dust Bowl area; most headed west for California. During the Great Depression, California was believed to be the promised land and a safe haven for victims of dust storms and terrible economic disasters. Arriving in California many migrants were turned away by policemen acting as bouncers at the border. Those who made it through found that the wonderful things they had heard about the promised land were not true. "There's nothing here for you" or "don't need no more Oakies here" was the welcome they got from residents living there. Many had come to find that life wasn't any easier in California than in the Dust Bowl. Some accurate examples of this are displayed in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

The Economy
 ----The Dust Bowl did not cause the Great Depression, although it did contribute to some of the economic problems. The dust storms began years after the arrival of the Great Depression, leaving them only to further hinder the economy. When farmers in the Midwest started having problems with their crops because of "black blizzards", they found it difficult to make profit and eventually lost their land to banks and the government. This played a major role in the problems with unemployment in the United States.

  http://wolves.dsc.k12.ar.us/jrhigh/media/%20ACE/the%20Chad/the_dust_bowl.htm

[Mishe Vanatta]

[Mishe Vanatta]

Even though Oklahoma City skirted the generally defined edge of the Dust Bowl and that the "event" is more an "Oklahoma" than an "Oklahoma City" topic, it would be wrong not to include it as part of Oklahoma City history. Even though its impact more directly hit western Oklahoma, particularly the northwest, the impact of the Dust Bowl was certainly felt in Oklahoma City and, in a broader sense, the general "label" which many in and out of Oklahoma City came to have if they are from Oklahoma -- was born -- "Okies."

The National Weather Service lists the Dust Bowl as the 1st of Oklahoma's "Top Ten" weather events of the 20th Century:


1. Dust Bowl - Early and Mid 1930s. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s ranks also among the most significant events of the century nationally, by literally changing the face of the Great Plains. Extreme heat and drought, especially in 1934 and 1936, with the all-time record high of 113°F set at Oklahoma City in August 1936. "Black Sunday" was the near the height of the Dust Bowl, with accounts of giant clouds of dust descending on ****, Oklahoma on April 14, 1935.

[Mishe Vanatta]

The Dust Bowl, also known as the "Dirty Thirties", was a series of dust storms caused by a massive drought and decades of inappropriate farming techniques that began in 1930 and lasted until 1941. This ecological disaster caused a mass exodus from the Oklahoma Panhandle region and also the surrounding Great Plains. Around 300,000 to 400,000 Americans were displaced. Topsoil across millions of acres was blown away because the indigenous sod had been broken for wheat farming and the vast herds of buffalo were no longer fertilizing the rest of the native grasses.

It is well known that there was economic instability in agriculture during the 1920s, due to overproduction following World War I. National and international market forces during the war had caused farmers to push the agricultural frontier beyond its natural limits. Increasingly, marginal land that would now be considered unsuitable for use was developed to capture profits from the war. After the land had been stripped of its natural vegetation, the ecological balance of the plains was destroyed, leaving nothing to hold the soil when the rains dried up and the winds came in the 1930s.

With their crops ruined, lands barren and dry, and homes foreclosed for unpayable debts, thousands of farm families loaded their belongings into beat-up Fords and followed Route 66 to California. Many of the displaced were from Oklahoma, where 15% of the state's population left. The migrants were called "Okies," whether or not they were from Oklahoma. High end estimates for the number of displaced Americans are as high as 2.5 million, but the lower value of 300,000 to 400,000 [Oklahomans] is more probable based upon the 2.3 million population of Oklahoma at the time. [Emphasis supplied]
John Steinbeck's classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, tells part of the story. Whether living in or out of the state, Oklahomans wherever located have ever since been labled, "OKIES". Even though, today, many of us who live here wear that cheap-shot title as a badge of honor, it was not always so.

The Dust Bowl was not just an Oklahoma "event" - it covered the all of Great Plains states, generally, and Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, as well. All of those migrating west, whether from the Dakotas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, wherever, became known as "Okies." See this Nebraska website.

This image from an article by Geoff Cunfer at eh.net/encyclopedia shows the most concentrated Dust Bowl area

[Mishe Vanatta]

[Mishe Vanatta]

These images from an article by Article by Jana Hausburg at the Okc Metro Area website show some of the effects in the western part of Oklahoma County in the mid-1930s, of course, part of Oklahoma City today:

[Mishe Vanatta]

Lake Overholser Looking North to US 66 In 1935
Notice the US 66 Bridge, NW 39th, at the Top

[Mishe Vanatta]

The article says,


Although Oklahoma County was not in the region known as the Dust Bowl, dry conditions upriver produced low water levels and parched earth like this at Lake Overholser [above].
An article in the National Journal says that, "Then in the 1930s came a decade of bust--or dust--as soil loosened by erosion was whipped into giant swirling clouds: The Dust Bowl. 'On a single day, I heard, 50 million tons of soil were blown away,' John Gunther reported later. 'People sat in Oklahoma City, with the sky invisible for three days in a row, holding dust masks over their faces and wet towels to protect their mouths at night, while the farms blew by.' Okies headed in droves west on U.S. 66 to the green land of California, and Oklahoma's population sank to 2.3 million in 1940 and 2.2 million in 1950, not to reach its 1930 level again until 1970."

Images from the County Assessor's Photo Gallery show a few images of downtown during this time ...

[Mishe Vanatta]

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