The Dust Bowl was a series of
dust storms causing major
ecological and
agricultural damage to
American and
Canadian prairie lands from
1933 to
1939, caused by severe
drought conditions coupled with decades of extensive farming without
crop rotation among
cotton,
corn and
grain farmers using techniques that promoted
erosion. The fertile
soil of the
Great Plains was exposed through removal of grass during plowing. During the drought, the soil dried out, became
dust, and blew away eastwards, mostly in large black clouds. At times, the clouds blackened the sky all the way to
Chicago, and much of the soil was completely lost into the
Atlantic Ocean. This ecological disaster, which began as the economic effects of the
Great Depression were intensifying, caused an exodus from
Texas,
Oklahoma, and the surrounding Great Plains, with over 500,000 Americans left homeless. Many Americans migrated west looking for work while many Canadians fled to urban areas like
Toronto. Some two-thirds of farmers in "
Palliser's Triangle", in the Canadian province of
Saskatchewan, had to rely on government aid to survive. This was due mainly to drought,
hailstorms, and erratic weather rather than to dust storms such as those which were occurring on the U.S. Great Plains farther south. Some residents of the Plains, in especially
Kansas and Oklahoma, fell prey to illnesses and death from
dust pneumonia and the effects of
malnutrition.
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"1930s, when drought caused hardship on the prairie; dirty thirties" During the dirty thirties, soil drifted into the ditches and crops wouldn't grow.
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