Dust Bowl
Plains drought catastrophe
The Dust Bowl was an ecological catastrophe in the American Great Plains during the 1930s, when severe drought combined with decades of poor farming practices stripped topsoil from millions of acres.
Massive dust storms—"black blizzards"—buried farms, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and became a defining image of the Great Depression.
Her grandparents fled Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl. (Lowercase dust bowl describes any similar ecological disaster.)
1930s global economic crisis
- 1930sFourth decade, twentieth century
- droughtProlonged water scarcity
- crop failureWhen fields yield nothing
- famineSevere food shortage
prairie · Great Plains · Oklahoma · Kansas · Texas · panhandle · homestead · farmland
Cereal crop for flour
- sorghumWarm-climate cereal grass
- cornCereal grown on cobs
- barleyGrain for malt
- cottonPlant fiber for textiles
plow · tractor · combine · harvest · fallow · irrigation · dryland farming · sodbuster
Dust Bowl refugees, informally
- exodusMass departure from somewhere
- displacementRemoval from usual location
- Route 66Historic cross-country highway
- CaliforniaWest coast megastate
Grapes of Wrath · John Steinbeck · migrant workers · refugees · sharecroppers · tenant farmers · Hoovervilles · labor camps
Great Depression
1930s global economic crisis
- 1930sFourth decade, twentieth century
- droughtProlonged water scarcity
- crop failureWhen fields yield nothing
famine · prairie · Great Plains · Oklahoma · Kansas · Texas · panhandle · homestead · farmland · devastation
wheat
Cereal crop for flour
cotton · plow · tractor · combine · harvest · fallow · irrigation · dryland farming · sodbuster · cultivator
Okies
Dust Bowl refugees, informally
- exodusMass departure from somewhere
- displacementRemoval from usual location
- Route 66Historic cross-country highway
California · Grapes of Wrath · John Steinbeck · migrant workers · refugees · sharecroppers · tenant farmers · Hoovervilles · labor camps · resettlement
- US HistoryAmerican Revolution, US history, Civil War, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln
- Midwest historyChicago, Detroit, Great Lakes, Mississippi River, Ohio River
- 20th CenturyWorld War I aftermath, Cuban Missile Crisis, atomic bomb, New Deal, Nazi Germany
- 20th Century HistoryWorld War I, WWI, Great Depression, Russian Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution
- American landscapeprairies, plains, Great Plains, heartland, Midwest
- drynessarid, aridity, dry, dehydrated, bone dry
Dust Bowlflood
Overwhelming water overflow
deluge · inundation · monsoon · flooding · waterlogged
Dust Bowlbreadbasket
Major grain-producing region
bumper crop · bountiful harvest · Garden of Eden · land of plenty · cornucopia
Dust Bowloasis
Fertile desert spot
Eden · paradise · fertile land · green pastures · rainforest
dust, bowl, dusty, dusting, bowls, duster, bowling, dusted, dusts