The Dust Bowl

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The Dust Bowl
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The Dust Bowl gt Dust Storm. A wall of dirt and
sand descends upon Spearman, Texas, on August
14, 1935
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The Dust Bowl gt Dust Storm Approaching Startford,
Texas, 1930s
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The Dust Bowl gt Pare Lorenz, The Plow That Broke
the Plains, 1936
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The Dust Bowl gt Map of Erosion and Dust on the
Plains
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Migration gt Traveling from South Texas to the
Arkansas Delta, 1936
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Migration gt On the road to California, February
1936
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Migration gt John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

• Novel published in 1939
• Film in 1940 (closely follows the novel)
• Reinforced the belief that migrants fled the dust
  storms
• In fact, they fled for varied reasons, including
  drought, falling agricultural prices, and
  mechanization of agriculture
• 16,000 farmers fled dust storms
• 400,000 migrated, from a larger area in the
  Southwest
• Famous scene farmer confronts a man who is
  about to level his house, used the plight of
  farmers to convey a sense of unfocused outrage
  shared by many others during the Depression -
  people couldnt figure out who was to blame for
  the disaster

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FSA gt Arthur Rothstein, Steer Skull, Pennington
County, South Dakota 1936
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FSA gt Arthur Rothstein, the same skull on dry
sun-baked earth
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FSA gt Arthur Rothstein, the same skull, cows
grazing in the background
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FSA gt Arthur Rothstein, Farmers and Sons,
Cimmaron County, Oklahoma, 1936 (after the dust
storm)
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FSA gt Arthur Rothstein, the same farmer
pretending to flee a dust storm
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FSA gt Arthur Rothstein, the same farmer
pretending to flee a dust storm
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FSA gt Walker Evans, Burroughs Photographs, Hale
County, Alabama, 1936
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FSA gt Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, March 1936
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FSA gt Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother series,
March 1936