Volume 18 , Issue 15

1935, A Vivid Story of Dust Storm Area

It was in The Franklin Evening Star, Franklin, Indiana, dated 16 April 1935, Tuesday, page 6, this headline of the greatest dust storm was reported: "United Press Writer Tells A Vivid Story Of Dust Storm Area." Farmers were discouraged and ready to quit is what Frank McNaughton learned. Some caught refuge from the fury of the blast to seek shelter in a barn - livestock were frightened.

Found on Newspapers.com

For two years dust had been transforming once fertile wheatlands of a region large as New England into desert. Since February, 1935 the storms had reached unprecedented intensity. The United Press sent a staff correspondent into the region worst affected, to report first hand what they saw and what they learned from the inhabitants. The tour would carry Frank McNaughton through the Oklahoma and texas Panhandles, Eastern New Mexico, Southeastern Colorado and Western Kansas.

Clayton, NM, April 16, 1935 -- The wall of dust, at least 10,000 feet high boiled over the horizon on the wings of a gale and engulfed McNaughton and every animate and inanimate object in blackness laden with stinging dirt.

McNaughton drove to Clayton, NM from Felt, Oklahoma, through region once called the "Bread basket of America." The storm broke suddenly at about 5 p.m. the day before. Leaving Felt McNaughton heard cries of "dust storm, dust storm." McNaughton saw men and women and children running toward their homes. Brave with inexperience McNaughton drove on.

As McNaughton wrote,"Soon the fearsome force was upon me. Across the horizon the earth rose into the sky. At the top of the dense black wall was a weird yellow fringe. I raced the storm for 55 miles, seeing the ground like the troubled surface of a volcanic pool, rising into the air. It caught me at the M. H. Derksen ranch. I wheeled into the ranch yard and stopped six feet from eh stout, tightly built stock barn Before I could dash through the doors the dust hit. I spat on my handkerchief and held it to my nose. I could not see my hand at my face.

"The dust was inescapable. It sifted through the double walls of the barn and made the air almost unbeatable. It was like emery dust. My lungs still ache.

"In the stalls, frightened cattle bellowed and snorted incessantly. Gradually the first phase of the storm passed. I opened a door and after a time could see the outline of the automobile. After two hours I could see the ranch house 60 feet away.

"In the next few hours the storm thickened and thinned alternately several times. Between me and the sun the dust streaked over the plains in sheets. In an interval of light I saw a chicken's head protruding from a drift and pulled the bewildered bird free.

"The remainder of the trip to Clayton was frightful. While int he barn two feet out and drifted against the car. Driving was by instinct. Once ai ran into a ditch that had been filled with dust. Another time I ran over a farmer's mailbox which became visible only when it was a foot beyond the radiator cap.

"It is not flippancy when I say I had received a taste of what B. A. Donaldson, L. M. Price, preston Foreman, G. E. Stewart and others told me last week when I visited Strafford, Texas, west of here, after a swing from Sayre, Oklahoma, through the Texas panhandle towns of Amarillo and Dalhart.

"It seems tragically casual to report that the dust mantle has stifled crops over millions of acres in the southwest. But the men who own the land are not beating their breasts. Many, like Donaldson, who owns 1,000 acres of land near Stratford, have quit the fight. Donaldson fought the reluctant earth eight years, drought another two. Two and a half months of use whipped him."

Sherman county, Texas, in 1931 produced 5,000,000 bushels of wheat. The crop in 1935 would not make 100,000 bushels. Much of the land was mortgaged, mostly to the government.

The land was empty of livestock. Most of it was sold as an alternative to death in barren and waterless pastures. One sees no chickens, few hogs, hardly and cattle. There is no feed.

Few ranchers had any faith in federal soil erosion projects. What could am with tractors and listers do to control a destructive phenomenon that ravages thousands of square miles?

Some asked for a deluge of rain to get some grass growing. Some wheat farmers were chiseling their land, furrowing the fields at right angles to prevailing winds.

Federal money had kept business going since 1933. W. T. Martin, implement and hardware dealer at Stratford said. A score of families who came to Sherman county in 1929 had left in recent weeks. Several scores had emigrated from he area north of Dalhart.
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