"The Dirty Thirties" would last for about a decade, but it had long-term economic impacts that affected the region for much longer. By 1934, around 35 million acres of former farm land had been rendered useless for farming, while another 125 million acres were close to reaching this point. Regular rainfall would return to the region by the end of 1939, but the damage had already been done; the agricultural value of farmland would take decades to recover and much of the population moved to California and other West Coast states.
The most iconic image of the Dust Bowl are the "black blizzards", severe dust storms that swept the Great Plains. These clouds of topsoil would often blacken the sky for up to days at a time, and there was no way to escape the dust. The dust could penetrate even the most well-sealed homes, leaving itself everywhere on food, skin, and furniture. Even worse, some people developed "dust pneumonia", which gave them chest pain and made it difficult to breath. While there is no official number for how many people died, estimates range from hundreds to several thousand people.
Around 2.5 million people left the Dust Bowl states, which include Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma during the 1930s. This was the largest migration in American history, with over 440,000 people leaving Oklahoma alone. Many of these migrants were poverty-stricken and traveled west looking for work. 250,000 Oklahoma migrants moved to California between 1935 and 1940, a third of whom settled in the rich agricultural San Joaquin Valley. These dust bowl refugees were called "Okies," and they often faced discrimination and extremely low wages upon reaching California. Many of them were forced to live in shantytowns and tents along irrigation ditches, and the term "Okie" was soon used to refer to any poor Dust Bowl migrant, regardless of their true origin.
Sources:
https://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl
http://www.pbs.org/show/dust-bowl/
Amazing post Cody! I loved how indepth your post was and how you explained not only what the dust bowl was, but also things such as the black blizzards and dust phneomenia. I was particularly shocked by how many people in these states made a bee-line for the west coast particularly in oklahoma. However what i found to be most hysterical was the more out of the box proposed solutions. For example farmers all over the country did a rain dance, and in one particular town in Texas residents would pay A self-professed rainmaker $500 to launch a rocket of dynamite and other explosives into the sky to induce showers.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/amp/amp.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-dust-bowl
This was a great post discussing the hardships of migrants moving from places affected by Dust Bowl, such as Oklahoma, to western states, such as California. This traveling of "Okies" was discussed by renowned author, John Steinbeck, in his novel "The Grapes of Wrath." It was published in 1939 where such migration was still ever so occurring. The novel centers on a specific family and the hardships that come with leaving towards California. Deaths of family members and financial instability are elaborated one. The novel has since been adapted into a play in the 1980s as well as a film in the 1940s.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/nov/21/melvyn-bragg-on-john-steinbeck
This is a super interesting blog post! The Dust Bowl, one of the biggest natural disasters in American history, was responsible for such a catastrophic loss of land, displacing thousands of families. During the May, 1936, the Atlantic published letters of correspondence between a woman who was living in Oklahoma and her friend in Maryland, and it detailed the utter hardships living within the Dust Bowl during the 1930s.
ReplyDeleteSource: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1936/05/letters-from-the-dust-bowl/308897/
This is such a great post! you did a great job talking about how migrants from dust-bowl states had faced even more hardships by leaving their states for the west, and how that effected society in those western states, such as California.
ReplyDeleteThis topic hits home because of a book I read a few years ago about the dust bowl. It was about this girl who was named Billy Joe, because her father wanted a boy. This girl ends up becoming successful pianist, even with kerosene-burnt hands and dust torn lungs. it is a very interesting read and I recommend it if you are interested in the topic!
https://www.louisianabelieves.com/docs/default-source/teacher-toolbox-resources/ela-grade-6---out-of-the-dust-1-0-unit.pdf?sfvrsn=2