I. Introduction a) Imagine being in the Midwest and then seeing a giant dust cloud. b) General info about Dust Bow. c) Because the Midwest became a failing region, many dreams were crushed. d) In the 1930's better known as "the dirty thirties", the dust bowl effected thousands of farmers and their families in the Southwest/Midwest.…
James Gregory’s, American Exodus, is a book that focuses on Dust Bowl migration to California, and their economic and social struggles in California. The book first starts off setting up the historical context of the Dust Bowl and the migrants with statistics, maps, pictures, and migrant backgrounds in the introduction. The overall book reads like a history textbook on the Dust Bowl, which is divided into two parts instead of narrative based on one family like The Grapes of Wrath. The first part of the book is organized chronologically, focusing on the resettlement of the Dust Bowlers, and the second part is done thematically and focuses on Okie culture. Gregory’s approach successfully showed the clash of cultures and social struggles the migrants faced in California accurately without having to caricaturize the migrants.…
The Great Plains of the 1930’s was given the name dust bowl because of the massive dust storms caused by the failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion. Most people don't know that grass is an anchor for our soil. When farmers plow the grass up for miles at a time to plant wheat. These tactics mixed with the factors of drought, light soil and high winds cause a catastrophic chain of events known as the “black blizzards” or dust storms. These storms drove off over half of the Great Plain population because of the deaths of cattle and their ravaged pastures.…
In the “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck, we follow the Joads as they migrate from Oklahoma to California with family and friends in three stages. I believe that Steinbeck used unsophisticated protagonists and language for the sake of the general public. John Steinbeck wanted this book to be relatable to the public and for people to understand and relate to and feel compassion for the people who felt the hardships of the dust bowl the most. Steinbeck uses a lot of repetition making it easy to relate to the simple characters that Steinbeck has created for us.…
The dirt to lost moisture and became loose due to the lack of rainfall. If no grass is in place to secure the soil, like in the 1930s, the dirt will be blown around, contributing to the development developing of a dust storm. Therefore, the drought that occurred during the 1930s certainly was a factor in causing the Dust Bowl. Although the…
By the end of the Dust Bowl over 250,000 were homeless. The Dust Bowl was a disastrous event caused by farmers over plowing the fields in the south, but there were terrible effects on farmers and their crops, animals, and daily lives. The Dust Bowl was caused by farmers but that doesn’t mean it didn’t affect them. Jackrabbits and grasshoppers (a.k.a. locus) weren’t necessarily bad unless you were a farmer.…
Both events resulted in troubled times for people and workers. People lost their homes, suffered from malnourishment and seemed to be struggling to make it through the day. This book focuses on the problems and results of the Dust Bowl, “the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history”. The Dust Bowl followed The Great Plow-up, which “turned 5.2 million acres of thick native grassland into wheat fields”. Eventually, the United States began to enter into the time of the depression and prices for crops began to sink.…
Have you ever seen or heard of a drought so bad that it turned nice green hills into a desert of sand and dirt? Starting in the 1930s, in the eastern part of the country, a very bad drought did just that. It made its way west, and by 1934 it turned the Great Plains into a desert. In 1935 this drought was dubbed the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl had a huge effect on the daily lives of people and their homes, it wreaked havoc on their economy, and destroyed their land.…
The Dust Bowl and Life in The 1930ś Introduction: The Dust Bowl was a tragic event in the Southern states that impacted families as many people died and had creased financial responsibilities, but different laws were put in place to help people in the Dust Bowl. The Great Plains suffered a drought between 1930-1940. This drought was caused by changes in weather, farming techniques, economic and cultural factors. Many people suffered during the Dust Bowl including crops and animals.…
Prior to 1930, the area of the United States between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains (Great Plains) was lush with natural prairieland vegetation and abundant rainfall. It was these characteristics which made it seem ideal for westward development across the United States. However, during the 1930’s, the Great Plains endured a nine year period of severe droughts which lead to intense dust storms which killed crops, livestock and people. This time period has been consequently been labeled as the Dust Bowl.…
The Dust Bowl In the 1930’s and the early 1940’s, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered a severe drought in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and Kansas. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their land or raised cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dryland wheat.…
Farming was the cause of the dust bowl but nobody knew that at first. People began calling these storms “Black Blizzards” because the sand moved around like snow and covered the sun so it was as black as night. Many people’s lives were at stake during this time period because of the dust. “Surviving the Dust Bowl is the remarkable story…
Human played a Huge role in the creating of the “Dust Bowl”. Our government attempted to “lure” farmers to the South and to farm as much land as they wanted. The government would put up signs of farmers with potatoes the size of cars and cabbage to large to carry, this got farmers excited because this was during the great depression and they saw it as a way to help their family. The invention of tractors that would farm and plow land also caused tons of damage towards the Dust Bowl. Instead of farmers being able to plow one acre a day with a horse they could not plow up to fifty.…
When the Dust Bowl conditions led to farmers abandoning their fields, mass migration patterns emerged with populations shifting from rural areas to urban centers. Farmers and landholders in the Great Plains had to migrate due to a period of…
The 20th century marked a time of advancements. It is known as the Progressive Era. By this time not only was the nation changing, but so was the life of families. Family life drastically changed in the twentieth century. The traditional morals, values, and roles that families cherished all the decades before were beginning to vanish.…