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Oct 27, 2009 · The Dust Bowl was caused by several economic and agricultural factors, including federal land policies, changes in regional weather, farm economics and other cultural factors. After the...
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The Dust Bowl was the result of a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors (severe drought ) and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion , most ...
Jul 21, 2024 · Dust Bowl, name for both the drought period in the Great Plains that lasted from 1930 to 1936 and the section of the Great Plains of the United States that extended over southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and northeastern New Mexico.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- One monster dust storm reached the Atlantic Ocean. While “black blizzards” constantly menaced Plains states in the 1930s, a massive dust storm 2 miles high traveled 2,000 miles before hitting the East Coast on May 11, 1934.
- The Dust Bowl was both a manmade and natural disaster. Beginning with World War I, American wheat harvests flowed like gold as demand boomed. Lured by record wheat prices and promises by land developers that “rain follows the plow,” farmers powered by new gasoline tractors over-plowed and over-grazed the southern Plains.
- The ecosystem disruption unleashed plagues of jackrabbits and grasshoppers. If the dust storms that turned daylight to darkness weren’t apocalyptic enough, seemingly biblical plagues of jackrabbits and grasshoppers descended on the Plains and destroyed whatever meager crops could grow.
- Proposed solutions were truly out-of-the-box. There were few things desperate Dust Bowl residents didn’t try to make it rain. Some followed the old folklore of killing snakes and hanging them belly-up on fences.
Nineteen states in the heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
Nov 21, 2023 · It is called the Dust Bowl because erosion caused top soil in Midwestern states to become powdery. Farmers plowed up millions of acres of native grassland, leaving nothing...