Volume 18 , Issue 15

July 1936, What Dust storms and Floods Mean to America

In the summer of 1936 dust storms and floods were considered enemies of the earth to America. The photographer taken this photo in July, 1936 was flying at an altitude of 12,000 feet when he caught this view of a dust storm 30miles south of Denver, Colorado. The dust, "pay dirt" to the farmers who lost it, blew 8000 feet in the air.

Found on Newspapers.com

The dust bowl was martyr, the sentiments of its people sacrificed temporarily in the interests of America's future well-being. Their farms and towns lumped together as part of a "dust bowl" did not set well with the people of southeastern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, western Kansas, western Oklahoma and northwestern Texas.

The story of the dust bowl is important to every section of America, because it is the story of wind erosion. And the dust bowl has no monopoly on wind erosion.

What happened to the high green plains of the southwest that once could swallow an army and show not a mark on its thick carpet to indicate a host had passed through?

Coronado, in 1540-41, brought an expedition form New Spain (Mexico) northward into what was new New Mexico, eastern Colorado, western Kansas.

Castenada, his chronicler, reported, " Who could believe that 1000 horses and 500 of our cows and more than 5000 rams and ewes and more than 1500 friendly Indians and servants in traveling over these plains would leave o more trace where they had passed than if nothing had been there - nothing?"

Thickly did the lush green grasses cover the plains. There the buffalo, starting northward in the Spring grazed each section in turn, yet left roots and seed to the miracle of reproduction.

After the Spaniards int eh southwest came the settlers on the eastern seaboard, the revolution, the steady westward march of the pioneers,t he influx of homesteaders who staked out their plots on the public domain.

Cattlemen and sheepmen drove their herds and flocks into the grassy plains of the southwest. Where cattle grazed, something remained; where sheep dropped, cattle could not follow and live. Into wEstern Kansas, Nebraska, eastern Colorado they moved; to the Red desert country of Wyoming up across Montana, the two Dakotas, clear to the Canadian border.

It was General Luther P. Bradley who reported, in 1868, "I believe that all the flocks and herds in the world could find ample pasturage on these unoccupied plains and the mountain slopes beyond."

Soon no range remained unstocked. Cattlemen and sheepmen warred against each other, but neither warred against the overgrazing which scientists, even then, realized would kill the soil.

Everyone knows today (21st century) that overgrazing leaves the soil without adequate cover to tie it down. Scientists held it was the overgrazing of these nomad herds that halted the work of nature, the march of grass over the sand, the march trees in the wake of grass.

The World War brought a cry for more wheat. Thousands of acres were put to the plow, planted to wheat, acres which the conservationists said should have been left in pasture.

Better farmers were nowhere to be found, said the soil conservation service, for if they did not farm their lands too wisely, they farmed them too well, making crops grow where perhaps nature never intended anything but native grasses marching in thick, green ranks across the plains.

Plowing the land to wheat turned up the clinging buffalo grass which protected the soil, Keeping the land in wheat, instead of alternating wheat with other crops, depleted the mineral wealth of the soil and made the wheat less able to stand lack of moisture. With drought came crop failures, and crop failures left the land barren, ready to blow with the wind.
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