Scenes from the Dust Bowl

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Scenes from the Dust Bowl
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Background

• Times were tough for everyone during the Great
  Depression. Farmers were especially hit hard
  because the price of crops and livestock dropped
  and farmers were unable to make a profit.
  Farmers were unable to pay the banks for their
  loans and many lost their farms as a result.
• The New Deal offered help to farmers by giving
  them loans so they would not lose their farms.
  However, farmers now had another problem.

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Drought!
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• A drought hit the Great Plains in the early
  1930s. Strong winds formed and dust storms turned
  day into night.

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Scenes from the Dust Bowl

• Abandoned farm in the dust bowl area. Oklahoma.

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Scenes from the Dust Bowl

• Son of farmer in dust bowl area. Cimarron
  County, Oklahoma.

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Scenes from the Dust Bowl

• Auto camp north of Calipatria, California.
  Approximately eighty families from the Dust Bowl
  are camped here. They pay fifty cents a week. The
  only available work now is agricultural labor.

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Scenes from the Dust Bowl

• Dust bowl refugee in California. "We was starved
  out and we live on perhaps. We could maybe find a
  little work if we could afford to roll".

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Scenes from the Dust Bowl

• Dust bowl refugee from Chickasaw, Oklahoma.
  Imperial Valley, California. "Black Sunday, 1934,
  that was the awfullest dust we ever did see".

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Scenes from the Dust Bowl

• The winds of the "dust bowl" have piled up large
  drifts of soil against this farmer's barn near
  Liberal, Kansas.

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Scenes from the Dust Bowl

• Dust storm. Oklahoma.

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Scenes from the Dust Bowl

• Dust storm near Mills, New Mexico.

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Scenes from the Dust Bowl

• Dust is too much for this farmer's son in
  Cimarron County, Oklahoma.

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All images and captions were obtained through the
American Memory Collection.
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