Randall Woodward

Mrs. Miller
History 4th Period
Tuesday, May 19, 2015

What Caused the Dust

Bowl?
The Dust Bowl: Not, as the name implies, a bowl of dust, but rather a
catastrophic series of more than 300 dust storms during the middle 1930s. The Dust
Bowl can be likened to Chinese chemical pollution in that both have had major
effects on the lifestyles and habits of the inhabitants during these events. The Dust
Bowl was caused by grass being plowed by farmers, mechanized farming, and low
rainfall.
Grass. Its so plentiful that it seems to hold no value whatsoever. After all,
why would anyone buy grass? But pertaining to the Dust Bowl, grass was very
valuable indeed. As any student who has learned about erosion in science class

could tell you, grass, or more specifically, grass roots, hold soil together.
Grass is what counts. Its what saves us all far as we get saved. Grass is
what holds the earth together.1-Texas sheepherder
So as weve learned, grass, or rather its absence, played an important part in
causing the Dust Bowl. But a few hundred acres of farmland wouldnt do that,
right? I hear you ask. Well, youd be right. But tens of millions of farmland would. In
1879, the acreage of harvested crops (meaning unprotected soil) was only 10
million acres in 8 Great Plains states. 50 years later in 1929 the amount of
harvested acres increased by more than ten times! 2 How did this happen? The
answer: mechanized farming. In 1879 farming had to be done by hand or by ox-andplow setups. In 1923, though, the self-propelled combine harvester was invented 3,
causing efficiency to increase tenfold. So if you could harvest faster, that meant you
could harvest more, too, increasing the amount of farmland, until it reached 15
million acres in 1929.4
So we now know that loss of grass coupled with an increase in unprotected farmland
played a major part in causing the Dust Bowl, but there is another. Let me ask you
this: why is dust dust and not mud? The answer, of course, is the absence of water.
Dust, in and of itself, implies dryness. And what is it called when there is a shortage
of water? A drought. During the Dust Bowl, the annual average precipitation for five
1 Document B
2 Document D
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combine_harvester
4 Document D

Randall Woodward
Mrs. Miller
History 4th Period
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Dust Bowl towns (Clovis, NM, Boise City, OK, Dalhart, TX, Burlington, CO, and
Goodland, KS) was 17.34 inches.5 Successful Great Plains farming (as determined by
John Wesley Powell) needs at least 20 inches of rain annually. None of these Dust
Bowl towns had more than 19 inches. Therefore droughts played not an insignificant
part in causing the Dust Bowl.
So now that we know what caused the Dust Bowl, we will now see how the Dust
Bowl affected the inhabitants of the Dust Bowl towns. The story of the Southern
plains in the 1930s is essentially about dust storms, when the earth ran amok. 6 For
the better portion of a decade, the dust storms continued. When one stopped,
another would take its place. In 1935 a particularly bad dust storm occurred in
Kansas. It is known as Black Sunday. People would eat under eating cloths to keep
from eating a bowl of soup seasoned with a two-inch thick layer of dust. When you
went to bed, youd have to repeatedly go to the sink to wash the grit off of your lips,
before getting back in bed underneath the covers. It was a bleak way of life.
So we find that the Dust Bowl is so much more than just a dust storm, and hopefully
you understand just exactly what caused the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was caused
by loss of valuable grass, mechanized farming, and drought.

5 Document E
6 Document A