Petal School District / Overview



Name ______________________ Date________________ Class Period ________

THE DUST BOWL

Directions: Read and analyze the passage below to answer the following questions.

PART 1: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

1     In the 1930s, the middle section of the United States suffered a terrible drought. Over a ten-year period, very little rain fell. Farmers couldn't grow crops. Because they had no crops to sell, they had no money. People were hungry. There were terrible dust storms. The blowing dust choked people and animals. They got sick and died. Year after year, the dust storms and the drought continued. Many farmers just packed up and left their land. They went looking for a better life out west.

 

2     The Dust Bowl has been called the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States. Few people realize, though, that it was partly caused by the farmers themselves. It's true that there was a terrible drought. But if the land had been managed better, the disaster would have been much less terrible.

 

3     One of the causes of the Dust Bowl was over-plowing the land. Farmers in the early 1920s were beginning to use tractors and other machines. This helped farmers plow more land and plant more crops. At the time, there happened to be plenty of rain. Between 1925 and 1930 were "the boom years." Farmers plowed and planted as many acres of wheat as they could. But years of drought run in cycles on the Great Plains. In 1931, the rain stopped. There had always been strong winds on the plains. When farmers plowed the land, the wind picked up the topsoil and blew it away.

 

4     The topsoil, once held in place by prairie grass, now was exposed to the wind. In 1932, the weather service reported fourteen dust storms. In 1933, there were thirty-eight. A big black cloud would appear on the horizon, and people and animals tried to take shelter from it. The storms would last for hours- some for more than three days. It was almost impossible to see because it was so dark. The dirt would get into houses through cracks around the doors and windows. People suffered from dust-pneumonia. Some died. Animals died in the fields, their stomachs coated with dirt.

 

5     In 1935, it was estimated that 850,000,000 tons of topsoil had blown off the southern plains. The states most affected were Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico. The Dust Bowl included more than one hundred million acres! More than half of the states (twenty-seven) were affected by the dust storms. By the end of 1935, many people just packed up and left their homes. This was the greatest migration ever of people inside the United States. One-fourth of the people who lived there moved and never came back. Banks, homes, and schools were boarded up. When the people moved west, they found there were no jobs waiting for them. All of the United States was in an economic depression. It was known as "the Great Depression," and it lasted from 1929 until the early 1940s. The drought and blowing dust storms only made it worse.

 

6     Congress declared soil erosion "a national menace" in an act establishing the Soil Conservation Service in 1935. Hugh H. Bennett, the director of the Soil Conservation Service, taught farmers new techniques of farming to save the soil. Farmers were paid to use the new methods of crop rotation, strip cropping, contour plowing, and planting cover crops and shelter belts of trees. By 1938, it was estimated that these methods had reduced the amount of blowing soil by sixty-five percent. But still, there was little rain. Finally, in the fall of 1939, the rains came. With the drought and the Depression over, the Great Plains were once again planted with wheat.

|1.   |2.   |

|In what period of time did the Dust Bowl occur? |In what area did the Dust Bowl occur? |

|[pic]  1920s |[pic]  The Southwest |

|[pic]  1910s |[pic]  The Southeast |

|[pic]  1930s |[pic]  The Southern Great Plains region |

| | |

|3.   |4.   |

|Which states were most affected by the Dust Bowl? |How many people who lived in the Dust Bowl moved away and never came |

|[pic]  Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi |back? |

|[pic]  New Mexico, California, Arizona, and Nevada |[pic]  One-fourth |

|[pic]  Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico |[pic]  One-third |

| |[pic]  One-half |

| | |

|5.   |6.   |

|What did farmers do that helped create the Dust Bowl? |How many tons of topsoil were estimated to have blown away by 1935? |

|[pic]  Plowed up all the soil |[pic]  100 million tons |

|[pic]  Dug ponds |[pic]  850 million tons |

|[pic]  Planted trees in rows among the wheat crop |[pic]  1,940 million tons |

| | |

|7.   |8.   |

|Only the people living in the Dust Bowl were affected by it. |Over one hundred million acres of land were part of the Dust Bowl. |

|[pic]  False |[pic]  False |

|[pic]  True |[pic]  True |

| | |

PART 2: ANALYSIS OF PHOTOS

Directions: Observe the 3 photos below, and read the accompanying passages. All photos relate to the events of the Dust Bowl. Answer the questions about each photo based on your observations.

| | Highway to the West/U.S. 54 in Southern New Mexico (Photo 1) |

| | |

[pic]

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9. Why do you think people might have driven down this road during the Great Depression when it was photographed it? How do you think they felt? ______________________________________

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10. Read the following excerpt from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and compare to the image “Highway to the West.”

“And then the dispossessed were drawn West--from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids were hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, and most of all for land.”

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Dust Bowl Refugees Arrive in California (Photo 2)

[pic]

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11. What objects are tied to the car? Why do you think these items are packed? _______________

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12. How many people are in the car? _________________________________________________

13. Can you tell if these people are moving or just taking a trip somewhere? Why do you think these people are traveling? What do you think is their destination? __________________________

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14. What problems might they have along the way? _____________________________________

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15. What do you think is the date of the photograph? Why do you think the photographer took this photograph? ___________________________________________________________________

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PART 3: ANALYSIS OF A PRIMARY SOURCE

Letter from a Dust Bowl Survivor

The following letter was written by a survivor of the Dust Bowl in McCracken,

Kansas.

Directions: Read and analyze the letter to answer the following questions.

March 24, 1935

Dear Family,

Did some of you think that you had a dust storm? I’ll tell you what it was. It was

us shaking our bedding, carpets, etc.

For over a week we have been having troublesome times. The dust is something

fierce. Sometimes it lets up enough so we can see around; even the sun may shine

for a little time, then we have a frenzied time of cleaning, anticipating the comfort

of a clean feeling once more.

We keep the doors and windows all shut tight, with wet papers on the sills. The

tiny particles of dirt sift right through the walls. Two different times it has been an

inch thick on my kitchen floor.

Our faces look like coal miners’, our hair is gray and stiff with dirt and we grind

dirt in our teeth. We have to wash everything just before we eat it and make it as

snappy as possible. Sometimes there is a fog all through the house and all we can do

about it is sit on our dusty chairs and see that fog settle slowly and silently over

everything.

When we open the door, swirling whirlwinds of soil beat against us unmercifully,

and we are glad to go back inside and sit choking in the dirt. We couldn’t see the

streetlight just in front of the house.

One morning, early, I went out during a lull, and when I started to return I

couldn’t see the house. I knew the direction, so I kept on coming, and was quite

close before I could even see the outline. It sure made me feel funny.

There has not been much school this week. It let up a little yesterday and Fred

went with the janitor and they carried dirt out of the church by the scoopful. Four

of them worked all afternoon. We were able to have church this morning, but I

think many stayed home to clean.

A lot of dirt is blowing now, but it’s not dangerous to be out in it. This dirt is all

loose, any little wind will stir it, and there will be no relief until we get rain. If it

doesn’t come soon there will be lots of suffering. If we spit or blow our noses we get

mud. We have quite a little trouble with our chests. I understand a good many have

pneumonia.

As for gardens, we had ours plowed, but now we do not know whether we have

more or less soil. It’s useless to plant anything.

Grace

Discussion Questions:

16. According to Grace’s letter, what problems did people living in the Dust Bowl encounter?

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17. How would you describe Grace’s attitude about the dust? ______________________________

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18. What qualities or traits do you think helped Grace and her family survive the difficulties that they faced? _____________________________________________________________________

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19. When did Grace write the letter? __________________________

20. Using context clues, explain what the word unmercifully means. ________________________

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PART 4: MAP ANALYSIS

[pic]

Directions: Observe the map below and answer the following question.

21. The shaded states show the most heavily affected areas. List those states.

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2.

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