Dust Bowl Research Paper

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In the 1930’s America was hit by a few unfortunate events. Many people know of the Great Depression that occurred during this time, but not many know of the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was a catastrophe that occurred due to several years of drought. It caused major issues for farmers in the area and even eventually started causing issues for the people living in the area. When farmers started settling in the Midwest, they began farming as much wheat as they could because the demand for the crop was extremely high. Caught up in their greed, the farmers were careless in the way they planted the crops and completely ruined the land. They began planting in grasslands that were not made to farm on. The farmers plowed the soil time and time again and eventually the soil began to lose its fertility as there was not enough rainfall. The lack of good farming skills and the drought that hit caused the beginning of the…show more content…
Then in 1931, the rain stopped and what is known as the “black blizzard” began. What was fertile soil had turned into dust and when the wind blew through, it was picked up into the air, blocking the sun and casting entire towns into darkness. After the wind died down and the black blizzard was over, there was dust everywhere—in the water, food, and in the peoples’ lungs. In 1932, there were fourteen reported dust storms and in the next year, thirty eight. By 1934, the dust blizzards were coming so frequent that the people began to believe they could figure out where the dust was coming from by the color of it. If the color was black, it came from Kansas—gray from Colorado or New Mexico, and red from Oklahoma. Many people and animals began to get sick from the frequency of the storms. The dust was getting into their lungs and causing them to cough up lumps of dirt. Eventually this “sickness” was given the name dust

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