The Dust Bowl

In the 1930s, the southern Great Plains of the United States suffered one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation's history. For thousands of years, the region had been covered by grasses with deep roots that held the soil in place, even during dry years. In the early twentieth century, however, high wheat prices and new machines such as tractors encouraged farmers to plow up millions of acres of these grasslands.

When a long drought began in the early 1930s, the crops died, and nothing was left to protect the exposed soil. Strong winds lifted the dry topsoil into enormous dust storms. The worst of these, on April 14, 1935, turned day into night across several states and became known as Black Sunday. Some storms carried dust as far as the Atlantic coast. Thousands of families, unable to grow anything, abandoned their farms and moved west.

The disaster led to major changes in farming. In 1935, the federal government created the Soil Conservation Service, which taught farmers to plow along the natural curves of the land, to rotate crops, and to plant rows of trees to slow the wind. These methods helped the region recover, and many of them are still used today.