Dust Bowl Research Paper

The Dust Bowl was a "decade-long disaster" and a series of droughts was one of the worst man-made natural disasters in American history. The Dust Bowl disaster was caused by a series of devastating droughts in the 1930s, poor soil conservation techniques and over-farming. The lack of rainfall and moisture dried out the soil of the farming regions in the prairie states. Dust Storms and 'Black Blizzards began in 1932 that ripped up the topsoil sweeping thousands of tons of dirt across America. Most early settlers grazed land for livestock until agricultural mechanization combined with high grain prices during World War I lured farmers to plow up millions of acres of natural grass cover to plant wheat …show more content…
It caused the most extensive damage. The Black Blizzard is estimated to have displaced three million tons of topsoil from the Great Plains region of the United States, consisting of Oklahoma, Texas panhandle and sections of Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. The photograph shows the "Black Sunday" blizzard approaching Spearman in northern Texas. The devastating "Black Sunday" blizzard was seen coming. The tons of dirt formed massive black clouds. The people were so terrified, believing that the world was coming to an end. The storms were a terrifying phenomena that were sometimes accompanied by thunder and lightning or, even worse, by an eerie silence. On the southern plains dust blew for just about eight years. From the north there was rolling black walls and from the south there was yellow haze coming from the …show more content…
The availability of migrant workers was substantially disproportionate to the number of jobs available. The migrant workers found they could not support themselves on the going wage, which had been driven down by the competition to obtain a job. Many workers set up “ditchbank” camps along the irrigation ditches in farmer’s fields. The camps created public health problems due to the unsanitary conditions. The famous author John Steinbeck described the social effects on the Dust Bowl migrants in "The Grapes of Wrath". California police established a border patrol, dubbed the "Bum Blockade," at all major rail and road crossings and local police repeatedly burned down the makeshift camps of the

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