When was the drought during the great depression

Several factors including a market crash started a period of economic downturn known as the Great Depression. The middle of the nation is in the midst of the first of four major drought episodes that would occur over the course of the next decade. Federal aid to the drought-affected states was first given in , but the first funds marked specifically for drought relief were not released until the fall of The term "Dust Bowl" was coined when an AP reporter, Robert Geiger, used it to describe the drought-affected south central United States in the aftermath of horrific dust storms.

Most areas of the country were returned to receiving near-normal rainfalls. The outbreak of World War II also helped to improve the economic situation. Another severe drought spread across the U. In the s, drought covered virtually the entire Plains for almost a decade Warrick, Many crops were damaged by deficient rainfall, high temperatures, and high winds, as well as insect infestations and dust storms that accompanied these conditions.

Although records focus on other problems, the lack of precipitation would also have affected wildlife and plant life, and would have created water shortages for domestic needs. A dust storm approaching Rolla, Kansas, May 6, Image: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Digital Archives. Although the s drought is often referred to as if it were one episode, there were at least 4 distinct drought events: —31, , , and —40 Riebsame et al.

These events occurred in such rapid succession that affected regions were not able to recover adequately before another drought began. Effects of the Plains drought sent economic and social ripples throughout the country. For example, millions of people migrated from the drought areas, often heading west, in search of work.

These newcomers were often in direct competition for jobs with longer-established residents, which created conflict between the groups. In addition, because of poverty and high unemployment, migrants added to local relief efforts, sometimes overburdening relief and health agencies. Many circumstances exacerbated the effects of the drought, among them the Great Depression and economic overexpansion before the drought, poor land management practices, and the areal extent and duration of the drought.

Warrick et al. The peculiar combination of these circumstances and the severity and areal coverage of the event played a part in making the s drought the widely accepted drought of record for the United States. To cope with and recover from the drought, people relied on ingenuity and resilience, as well as relief programs from state and federal governments. Despite all efforts, many people were not able to make a living in drought-stricken regions and were forced to migrate to other areas in search of a new livelihood.

It is not possible to count all the costs associated with the s drought, but one estimate by Warrick et al. Fortunately, the lessons learned from this drought were used to reduce the vulnerability of the regions to future droughts. In the early s, farmers saw several opportunities for increasing their production. New technology and crop varieties were reducing the time and costs-per-acre of farming, which provided a great incentive for agricultural expansion.

This expansion was also necessary to pay for expensive, newly developed equipment such as listers and plows that was often purchased on credit, and to offset low crop prices after World War I. When the national economy went into decline in the late s because of the Great Depression, agriculture was even more adversely affected. In addition, a record wheat crop in sent crop prices even lower.

These lower prices meant that farmers needed to cultivate more acreage, including poorer farmlands, or change crop varieties to produce enough grain to meet their required equipment and farm payments. When drought began in the early s, it worsened these poor economic conditions.

The depression and drought hit farmers on the Great Plains the hardest. Many of these farmers were forced to seek government assistance. However, even with government help, many farmers could not maintain their operations and were forced to leave their land.

Some voluntarily deeded their farms to creditors, others faced foreclosure by banks, and still others had to leave temporarily to search for work to provide for their families. In fact, at the peak of farm transfers in —34, nearly 1 in 10 farms changed possession, with half of those being involuntary from a combination of the depression and drought.

Farm family, Sargent, Nebraska, Photograph by Solomon D. A number of poor land management practices in the Great Plains region increased the vulnerability of the area before the s drought. Some of the land use patterns and methods of cultivation in the region can be traced back to the settlement of the Great Plains nearly years earlier.

Several expeditions had explored the region, but they were not studying the region for its agricultural potential, and, furthermore, their findings went into government reports that were not readily available to the general public Fite, Misleading information, however, was plentiful. In addition to this inaccurate information, most settlers had little money and few other assets, and their farming experience was based on conditions in the more humid eastern United States, so the crops and cultivation practices they chose often were not suitable for the Great Plains.

But the earliest settlements occurred during a wet cycle, and the first crops flourished, so settlers were encouraged to continue practices that would later have to be abandoned. When droughts and harsh winters inevitably occurred, there was widespread economic hardship and human suffering, but the early settlers put these episodes behind them once the rains returned.

The Homestead Act of , which provided settlers with acres of public land, was followed by the Kinkaid Act of and the Enlarged Homestead Act of These acts led to a massive influx of new and inexperienced farmers across the Great Plains.

This false belief was linked to Manifest Destiny —an attitude that Americans had a sacred duty to expand west. Rising wheat prices in the s and s and increased demand for wheat from Europe during World War I encouraged farmers to plow up millions of acres of native grassland to plant wheat, corn and other row crops. But as the United States entered the Great Depression , wheat prices plummeted.

Farmers tore up even more grassland in an attempt to harvest a bumper crop and break even. Crops began to fail with the onset of drought in , exposing the bare, over-plowed farmland.

Without deep-rooted prairie grasses to hold the soil in place, it began to blow away. Eroding soil led to massive dust storms and economic devastation—especially in the Southern Plains. Severe drought hit the Midwest and Southern Great Plains in Massive dust storms began in A series of drought years followed, further exacerbating the environmental disaster.

By , an estimated 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land had been rendered useless for farming, while another million acres—an area roughly three-quarters the size of Texas—was rapidly losing its topsoil. Regular rainfall returned to the region by the end of , bringing the Dust Bowl years to a close. The economic effects, however, persisted. Population declines in the worst-hit counties—where the agricultural value of the land failed to recover—continued well into the s.

Some of these carried Great Plains topsoil as far east as Washington , D. Billowing clouds of dust would darken the sky, sometimes for days at a time. In many places, the dust drifted like snow and residents had to clear it with shovels. Dust worked its way through the cracks of even well-sealed homes, leaving a coating on food, skin and furniture.

Estimates range from hundreds to several thousand people. On May 11, , a massive dust storm two miles high traveled 2, miles to the East Coast, blotting out monuments such as the Statue of Liberty and the U. The worst dust storm occurred on April 14, News reports called the event Black Sunday. A wall of blowing sand and dust started in the Oklahoma Panhandle and spread east. As many as three million tons of topsoil are estimated to have blown off the Great Plains during Black Sunday.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt established a number of measures to help alleviate the plight of poor and displaced farmers.

Walter Schmitt calls this the "double whammy" of drought and depression. The drought made the Depression worse, especially in the Great Plains. The "Great" Depression was a national and international disaster, but the Plains were hardest hit. With no rain, farmers couldn't grow any crops. No crops meant that the wind blew bare soil high in the air creating dust storms. School was canceled because of dust storms, not snowstorms. Some farmers, in trouble because of the bad economy, were forced to give up and move out of the plains looking for work.

New scientific evidence suggests that the drought of the s was the worst in North America in the last years, but it may pale in comparison with droughts in prehistoric times.