File:Farmer_walking_in_dust_storm_Cimarron_County_Oklahoma2.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Dust Bowl
Sign in to saveAlso known as Dirty thirty's, Dust Bowl Era, Dustbowl Era
period of severe dust storms in North America
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- environmental disaster
- Has part
- dust storm
- Country
- United States
- Image
- Dust Bowl - Dallas, South Dakota 1936.jpg
Show 6 more facts
- end time
- 1936-00-00
- Commons category
- Dust Bowl
- topic's main category
- Category:Dust Bowl
- start time
- 1930-00-00
- on focus list of Wikimedia project
- Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~32 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Arthur Rothstein's Farmer and Sons Walking in the Face of a Dust Storm, a Resettlement Administration photograph taken in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, in April 1936
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors (severe drought) and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion, most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region. The drought came in three waves: 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as long as eight years. It exacerbated an already existing agricultural recession.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Dust Bowl” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.