In the summer of 1931, the rains disappeared. Crops withered and died. There had always been strong winds and dust on the Plains, but now overplowing created conditions for disaster. The land became parched, the winds picked up—and the dust storms began. They rolled in without warning, blotting out the sun and casting entire towns into darkness. Afterward, there was dust everywhere—in food, in water, in the lungs of animals and people.
Powerful dust storms carrying millions of tons of stinging, blinding black dirt swept across the Southern Plains—the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, western Kansas, and the eastern portions of Colorado and New Mexico. Topsoil that had taken a thousand years per inch to build suddenly blew away in only minutes. One journalist traveling through the devastated region dubbed it the “Dust Bowl.”
The "black blizzards" that started in the summer of 1933 enveloped the lower great plains in a shroud, blowing away the thin layer of topsoil.Surviving the Dust Bowl is the remarkable story of the determined people who clung to their homes and way of life, enduring drought, dust, disease—even death—for nearly a decade. Less well-known than those who sought refuge in California, typified by the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” the Dust Bowlers who stayed overcame an almost unbelievable series of calamities and disasters.
Tuesday at 9 p.m. on PBS-HD
By submitting your comments, you hereby give AZPM the right to post your comments and potentially use them in any other form of media operated by this institution.