Volume 18 , Issue 15

April, 1935, Oklahoma Families Flee Dust

Grimy wagons and motorcars carried scores of families out of Northwestern Oklahoma April 16, 1935 in full flight from an eight state dust storm, among the most severe of a devastating series.

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Crop and livestock damage was already piled high in uncounted millions, increased rapidly, principally in Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado. Parts of New Mexico, Iowa, Nebraska, Texas and Missouri were also hit.

Wheat crops were doomed with the swirling clouds, which later that day reached Kansas City, which were viewed by R. I. Throckmorton, head the hanses state college agronomy department, as spelling doom for the big what acreage in Western Kansas. Throckmorton said not even rain now would check devastation int he drouth ridden sector, a major source of the nation's wheat.

Many schools and stores were closed in Colorado and Kansas. The business district at Scott City, Kansas was shut down for the third consecutive day.

More than 100 families had deserted Cimarron and Texan counties in the Northwestern Oklahoma Panhandle. Chester Lamar, a Federal Emergency Relief Administration administrator, said that 100 normally self sustaining families had left Texas county alone within the last 30 days.

The Oklahoma refugees told graphically of their distress: "I'm trying to get some place where my children can at least live." said Mrs. Lydia Dower, of Hardest, as she drove away by truck with her three children for Colorado. Atop the truck was the family goat.

"I had no chance to raise a crop her," explained Roy Woods, of Texoma, as he set out for Utah.

"This farm is the fruit of my labor ever since my wife and I married 28 years ago," said T. A. Foster, of Texoma, "but we are going to leave it. Fortunately, I inherited a farm in Linn county, Kansas, where we can go."

Floyd Hudson, member of the corn-hog committee in Cimarron county, said the dust haas driven out all but three of the 40 families who once lived in the six townships south of Boise City, Oklahoma.

Attributing conditions to the dust, Mrs. Mabel Lathrop, relief worker at Guymon, said 4,000 of the 5,500 families in six Northwestern Oklahoma counties were on relief rolls.

Many of the occupants of 36 truckloads of furniture sighted in April, 1935 between Guymon and Boise City would say, "We;re heading east."

Lacy Rankin of Hardest, Oklahoma, set out for California with his wife and children, saying, "We feared for the family's health if we stayed here. WE couldn't make it go here, anyway and we couldn't be worse off anywhere else."

Tom Blake of Hardest, lamented, "My family almost smothers to death every time whether is a storm." But the Colorado to which Blake was going also reported more dust. The fifth dust sorry in five days swirled over Lamar, Colorado, closing the dismissal of schools and stores at noon.

Every school in Baca county, Colorado, was closed. One hundred eighty school children and passengers on busses prepared to spend their second night at Pritchett, Colorado, in a school building and nearby homes.

Springfield, Colorado, stores exhausted their supplies of sponges, sought as dust masks. Trains int eh region were compelled to stop frequently. One arrived 12 hours late. A truck driver required 5-1/2 hours to drive 50 miles to Lamar.

Kansas, where dust had been spinning in low hanging clouds for more than a month, was virtually blanketed by the April, 1935 dust storm.
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