dust bowl (redirected from dust bowls)

Dust Bowl, the name given to areas of the U.S. prairie states that suffered ecological devastation in the 1930s and then to a lesser extent in the mid-1950s. The problem began during World War I, when the high price of wheat and the needs of Allied troops encouraged farmers to grow more wheat by plowing and seeding areas in prairie states, such as Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, which were formerly used only for grazing. After years of adequate yields, livestock were returned to graze the areas, and their hooves pulverized the unprotected soil. In 1934 strong winds blew the soil into huge clouds called "dusters" or "black blizzards," and in the succeeding years, from December to May, the dust storms recurred. Crops and pasture lands were ruined by the harsh storms, which also proved a severe health hazard. The uprooting, poverty, and human suffering caused during this period is notably portrayed in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Through later governmental intervention and methods of erosion-prevention farming, the Dust Bowl phenomenon has been virtually eliminated, thus left a historic reference.

Bibliography

See D. Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (1979); T. Egan, The Worst Hard Time (2005).

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Dust Bowl

Section of the U.S. Great Plains that extended over southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and northeastern New Mexico. The term originated after World War I, when the area's grasslands were converted to agricultural fields. In the naturally dry climate, overcultivation added to the effect of a severe drought in the early 1930s, when heavy winds blew the loose topsoil in “black blizzards” that blocked out the sun and piled dirt in drifts. Many farmers and ranchers left the region for California and elsewhere. The planting of windbreaks and grassland enabled the area to recover by the early 1940s.

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dust bowl

a semiarid area in which the surface soil is exposed to wind erosion and dust storms occur

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Dust Bowl

the. the area of the south central US that became denuded of topsoil by wind erosion during the droughts of the mid-1930s