Dust Bowl Disaster

[GON]

A farmer and his sons make their way through a dust storm in Cimarron Co., Oklahoma in April, 1936 during the Dust Bowl disaster.

 

[Owen Lucas]

It's possible the children could be a live, can you imagine living then and now. Not only a different time but almost another dimension.

 

[c502cid]

I do a lot of traveling in that region. You can still see rows of "hills" which are buried fences. Still quite a few barely hanging on homestead houses. It's easy to stop and imagine when I'm on local roads where you just don't get any other vehicles for hours. You do hear the woosh of the thousands of windmill blades though!

 

[IveBeenRued]

Everyone should tour the Great Plains at some point of their lives. Quite fascinating.

Out East (NY), we were taught in our HS history class that the dust bowl was caused by farmers that were too stupid to rotate their crops. It wasn’t until I toured the West that I learned that homesteaders were forced to chop down the local native grasses, which had 3-6 foot roots and were highly drought resistant, and replace them with some crop, any crop. If they didn’t do this, the federal government would find them to in violation of the homestead act, and the government would take back the land. By getting rid of the native grasses and replacing them with shallow rooted non-drought resistant plants, there was nothing to hold onto the soil when there was a massive drought.

Thanks for the picture.

 

[Pelican]

They ought to have learned what monoculture can do, but they haven't, in general.
There have been some voices of reason who advocate and preach regenerative agriculture and no-Till
but the switch has been painfully slow.

 

[Kira]

I was told back then from mid-Buffalo/mid-Pennsylvania westward there was a constant red hue to the sky due to suspended dust.

 

[Pelican]

I was told back then from mid-Buffalo/mid-Pennsylvania westward there was a constant red hue to the sky due to suspended dust.

A few months ago I was watching a report on agricultural methods, and in there it was mentioned how long it takes nature to
replace Top-Soil, I knew it was a long time and I thought it to be in centuries, well I was wrong it takes nature 1,500 yes 1,500 years
to replace 1" of top-soil, so you can imagine how much top-soil was lost during the dust-bowl.

 

[Kira]

I had a roommate who, when told of soil erosion and the history of the Dust Bowl, said, "No way. The Department of Agriculture would've been all over that in a minute".

He was truly the stupidest guy I ever met. If he could repeat a sentence, he thought he understood something.

 

[01rangerxl]

Crazy how people were living not that long ago. My house was built only 24 years after this picture was taken. 62 year old house, but has had AC, washing machine, 2 full bathrooms with walk in shower, etc since new. It was nice, but by no means super fancy when built. And of course it has needed many upgrades over the years, but the basic features are the same. The development in post WWII America was really nuts.

 

[jonnied1]

I lived just north of Lubbock TX when I was a kid in the early 1950's. I remember the dust storms that we had in the summers. They were a common thing back then. Everything in the house was covered in dust after one of those dust storms.

 

[K.Aoi]

Crazy how people were living not that long ago. My house was built only 24 years after this picture was taken. 62 year old house, but has had AC, washing machine, 2 full bathrooms with walk in shower, etc since new. It was nice, but by no means super fancy when built. And of course it has needed many upgrades over the years, but the basic features are the same. The development in post WWII America was really nuts.

I live in a first-generation single family home in an old northeastern city, the next street toward downtown is brownstones, and it was built in 1901. It definitely isn't "modern" but nothing like that either. Crazy that picture was taken 35 years after my house was built.