The Dust Bowl

​Commodity Prices Plunge

• For many farmers, their situations went from bad to worse.

• Debts piled up and crops prices dropped even further.

  • A bushel of wheat went from $2.16 to $0.38

• Many farmers lost their farms and traveled about the country looking for work.

​Tenant Farmers

• Between 1930-1934, roughly ​one million farmers failed to pay their mortgages and lost their farms

• Banks foreclosed on their farms and repossessed their farming equipment.

  • Banks sold what they could at public auctions​

• Ten​ant farmers: farmers who stayed in rural areas working for bigger landowners instead of themselves.

​Drought and Dust

• Normal rainfall rarely exceeded 20 inches a year.

• There were no irrigation practices, like rivers dams, to help

• ​Bad farming practices

  • Farmers plowed under natural grasses to plant winter wheat

  • Plains grasses prevented topsoil from blowing away during droughts​

• Drought, loose topsoil, and high winds led to the Dust Bowl disaster

​Dust Bowl

• High winds kicked up dust storms that blew towards the east​

• Clouds of dust and dirt could reach 8,000 feet high and move as fast 100 mph.

• These clouds would block out the sun

• Cattle and birds died, fish suffocated, covered rivers

• Dirt seeped into houses, covering everything with a layer of grime and dust.

Map of the Dust Bowl

• ​Dust storms started in the southern Great Plains

  • Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado​

• "dirty thirties"​

• Many farm families had no choice but to migrant further west.

• Although only some came from Oklahoma, these migrants were called Okies.

• Okies headed to California, Oregon, or Washington to find jobs. Others headed to the Midwestern states

• 800, 000 people migrated out of

  Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and

  Arkansas alone.