Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl was a severe 1930s drought and soil-erosion disaster that devastated the Great Plains and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Great Plains: A vast grassland region of central North America, extending from Canada into Texas. The Dust Bowl unfolded across this region’s dry farming lands.
Homestead Act: A 1862 United States law granting public land to settlers who lived on and improved it. Its land grants helped bring settlers and plowing onto the Great Plains.
Okie: A nickname, often derogatory, for migrants from Oklahoma and nearby states who moved west during the Great Depression. Many Dust Bowl migrants left Oklahoma for work and refuge in California.
Soil Conservation Service: A United States federal agency established in 1935 to combat soil erosion and promote conservation. It organized conservation work in response to the disaster’s accelerating erosion.
The Grapes of Wrath: A 1939 novel by John Steinbeck about an Oklahoma family displaced by hardship and migrating to California. The novel brought Dust Bowl displacement and migrant exploitation to a wide audience.
Drought: A prolonged period of unusually low precipitation that creates water shortages. Years of scarce rain weakened crops and left fields vulnerable to wind.
Oklahoma Land Rush: The 1889 opening of central Oklahoma lands to settlement, which triggered a rush of settlers. Settlement accelerated the conversion of prairie into farms in the region.
Dorothea Lange: An American documentary photographer whose images recorded poverty and displacement during the Great Depression. Her photographs made migrant hardship visible to a national audience.
Shelterbelt Project: A federal program that planted rows of trees across the Great Plains to reduce wind erosion. Its tree belts aimed to slow winds and protect cultivated fields.
Migrant Mother: A 1936 photograph by Dorothea Lange depicting Florence Owens Thompson and her children in a California migrant camp. The image became an enduring symbol of Depression-era migrant poverty.

Linked from 32 pages