Volume 18 , Issue 24

1935 - Appalling Economic Loss Swirling With Dust Out of West and Southwest Areas

This is another dust storm story from the same newspaper, dated Tuesday, 16 April 1935, page 5, news article from the Corsicana Semi-Weekly Light, out of Corsicana, Texas, "Appalling Figures Economic Loss Swirling With Dust Out of West and Southwest Areas."

The Associated Press sated in 1935, April 16, that the crop damage estimates exceeded $30 million, a seriously affected area of more than 15 million acres and relief rolls carrying well above 20,000 families were figures which swirled with the dust out of the west and southwest back then.

The figures pertained to the brewing zone of the recurring dust storms: Western and West Central Kansas, Southeastern Colorado, all of the Oklahoma Panhandle, the Southeastern corner of Wyoming, the Northeastern corner of New Mexico and the Northern two-thirds of the Texas Panhandle. A small part of Southwestern Nebraska also was in the territory, but the figures did not apply to it.

The crop damages largely concerned wheat. In the Texas Panhandle, Walter Barlow, Amarillo grain elevator operator, said a conservative estimate of losses ranged between $18 million and $20 million.

In kansas, the difference in the value of last year's crop in the dust-ridden parts of the estimated value for that year exceeded $5 million. Figures released by F. K. Reed, federal agricultural statistician, place the value on winter wheat the year before at in Western and West Central Kansas at more than $11 million. The estimated value in that area in 1935 was roughly $5 million.

Harry B. Crodell, president of the Oklahoma Board of Agriculture, said the best wheat in the northwestern panhandle was ruined but it was impossible yet to supply figures.
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