Great Depression: Crisis in the West

With the world and American economy completely collapsed, the Mid-West will suffer an additional economic and ecological catastrophic event. Beginning around 1931, the Mid-West farms of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico would live through, about a decade of drought, dust, disease, and death. This event was referred to as Dust Bowl or Dust Bowel Drought. Farmers of the Mid-West were trying to deal with the economic devastation of the Great Depression by increasing their crop yields. In order for this to happen, the farmers increased their yield by plowing and planting on more land. The plowing resulted in destroying the native drought- resistant prairie grass. The result of land mismanagement by the farmers, drought conditions, and wind resulted in great dust storms, also called Black Blizzards. These dust storms were so immense and frightening the farmers thought it was the end of the world. Black Blizzards would turn the day into night, covering areas the size of states, burying houses, cars, and farm equipment. It was believed that about 2-3 feet of topsoil eroded away destroying all the farmers crops.

The dust storms were devastating to the farmers, world’s food supply, and our countries economy. Locally it was a health, social, and economic problem. In 1935, the Black Blizzard blew for 26 days straight affecting the farmers and their family’s health (“Disasters,” n.d., para. 16).

During the 1930s, the Great Depression era, Mid-West farmer’s bankruptcy rates went up nearly sixty-six percent or approximately 750,000 farms were lost due to bankruptcy. Socially the family unit was affected; marriage rates and birth rates declined, and farmers were unable to feed their families. Over 1 million women were abandoned by their husbands. These extreme conditions eventually led to mass migration, families would abandon their farms and head west to California and Oregon since farming conditions there were stable.

References

The dust bowel (n.d.). Disasters, the 1930s. Retrieved February 25, 2011, from
http://www.u-s/- history.com/pages/h1583.html

A black blizzard over Prowers Co., Colorado, 1937. (Western History Collection, University of Oklahoma) picture 1.