Dust Bowl Days

A Kansas Portrait

Drought was nothing new to the farmers of western Kansas. Since their fathers and grandfathers had settled there in the 1870s, there had been dry periods interspersed with times of sufficient rainfall. But the drought that descended on the Central Plains in 1931 was more severe than most could remember.

With falling wheat prices in the 1920s, millions of acres of native grassland were replaced by heavily disked fields of straight row crops. Four years of drought shriveled the crops and left the loose top soil to the mercy of the ever-present winds. On Sunday, April 15, 1935, a massive front moved across the Great Plains from the northwest. Packing winds of 60 miles per hour, the loose topsoil was scooped up and mounded into billowing clouds of dust hundreds of feet high. People hurried home, for to be caught outside could mean suffocation and death.

The dust and darkness halted all forms of transportation and the fine silt sifting through any crack or joint forced the closure of hospitals, flour mills, schools and businesses. Some met this incredible hardship and gave up. Others stayed, living on hope, humor and stubbornness. Farmers listened to the advice of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service and began strip farming and contour farming, restoring pastureland and planting hundreds of miles of wind breaks. With concerted effort and favorable weather conditions, the land was made to bloom again as the breadbasket of the nation.