Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
three
h
e Great Droughts of the
Twentieth Century
h e rains disappeared—not just for a season but for years on
end. With no sod to hold the earth in place, the soil calcii ed
and started to blow. Dust clouds boiled up, ten thousand feet or
more in the sky, and rolled like moving mountains—a force of
their own.
Timothy Egan,
h
e Worst Hard Time
The Gr e at Dust Bow l drought was considered the worst climate
tragedy of the twentieth century in the United States and the worst pro-
longed environmental disaster in its recorded history. h e years between 1928
and 1939 were among the driest of the twentieth century in the American
West and Midwest, with heart-breaking impacts stretching into the Midwest
and Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. At its peak in
1934, this drought af ected three-quarters of the nation—stretching from
the Great Plains north into the Canadian Prairie, and along the West Coast.
what went wrong?
On the Great Plains, unsustainable agricultural practices compounded the
impacts of the drought on the land. For centuries, if not millennia, prairie
grasses had stabilized the topsoil by retaining moisture beneath the surface
through freezing winters and dry summers. Even in times of drought, the
grasses provided food and shelter for snakes, jackrabbits, prairie chickens,
and other wildlife.
During the 1920s, however, farmers on the Great Plains began removing
the native grasses down to their roots. Initially, the ef ects were not apparent.
But as millions of acres of prairie were converted to wheat production with
dry farming on a colossal scale, the damage was done. h
e farmers knew
