Volume 18 , Issue 24

Walking With Sweet Sadie

Looking through the old newspaper archives of the 1930s we are researching the day the sun was blacked out across parts of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandle, northwestern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado and southwestern Kansas, on 15 April 1935.

Found on Newspapers.com

An associated staff writer, Robert Geiger, traveled the dust bowl area gathering stories of the devastation and on the 15 April 1935 his famous headlines of "If It Rains" was printed and reprinted by various newspapers throughout the area.

Shifting of dirt and sand made regions appear desolate but most residents were determined to stay. Rain was reported the only solution. Moisture would still bring remarkable crops, many believed, basing hope on history.

Dust Area Looks Like Big Desert
This article appeared in The Emporia Gazette, Emporia, Kansas, 16 April 1935, Tuesday, page 9: "Dust Area Looks Like Big Desert," written by Robert Geiger.
Springfield, Colorado, April 16 (135) -- A man unfamiliar with the high plains dry-farming region, birthplace of the black blizzard, might see only despair and desolation in wind-scoured fields and dust-drifted roads and farmyards.

It does look pretty desperate, and some families have given up hope and moved away. Not many. Drylands farmers have been through dust storms before and most of them echo the anonymous old timer, a veteran of the panhandle, who said, "It takes grit to live out here - let 'er blow!"

As a matter of record, they had storms a century ago much like those of 1935.

The Rev. Isaac McCoy, pioneer surveyor and missionary, reported one in Western Kansas in November, 1830, which cut visibility to 30 yards, made hoof-prints invisible and masks imperative.

Again, in 1913, sand and dust drifted to the eaves of isolated farm buildings in one section, and in spots the region looked as it does today (April, 1935).

With this background of experience and endurance, and the knowledge that, given water, they can get remarkable crops, the dry-landers are hard to discourage.

Traveling through the dust sector - through Southeastern Colorado, Southwestern Kansas, the west end of the Oklahoma panhandle and the north tip of the texan Panhandle - ye see a region which now has the appearance of a vast desert, with miniature shifting dunes of sand. A rain might turn it green overnight, but that is how it looks now. There are spots where wheat fields will were green last week.

Tumbleweeds Cause Drifts
Many of the fields that were planted to wheat last fall give the illusion of a great colony of ants, with hills marking spots where tumbleweeds have caught the dust drifted around them. These little dunes are about a foot high.

In other places the drifts are as high as fences, especially in corners. Snow fences that have held virtually no snow for four winters are drifted to the tops with sand, and one can walk over them.

Road Surfacing Gone
Roads are blown clean of sand (surfacing material) for miles at a stretch, and in many parts of the region a powdery white silt covers the countryside.

On the roads can be seen an occasional car, loaded with a farm family, usually with a truck following carrying household goods. Some are headed for Eastern Kansas or Missouri, or Eastern Oklahoma, where rainfall has been normal, or to the Colorado mountain country.

Postmaster Herman Davis, of Springfield, Colroad, says about a dozen families have moved away, but most of them made a temporary change of address, planning to return when rain comes.

One farmer stated the dust clouds that hung over the repeatedly hit Oklahoma panhandle on 14 April 1935 created a darkness as deep as that of the cellar in which he sought refuge - fearing a cyclone.

Good Night! Good Luck!
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