The Great American Dust Bowl: Natural or Man Made Phenomenon? Essay

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Ecological disasters have numerous connotations. Some are attributable to nature, others occur due to man’s exploitation of natural resources and in some cases, it manifests as a combination of both. This essay examines the ‘Dust Bowl’ phenomenon that afflicted the American High plains through the explorations of Timothy Egan’s book Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl with a view to arriving at the possible causes of this unique ecological disaster.

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The essay examines Egan’s thesis that the Prairies subsisted as a holistic ecosystem till such time man started converting vast lands of the high plains for wheat production. This made the soil lose its protective layer of grass that held it together. The economic conditions of the Great Depression and the failure of rains in 1929 created conditions where the lands devoid of protective grass became dry and dust whipped up by the winds obliterated towns in the entire area. The rains failed consecutively for nine long years and that further made the situation worse. Egan argues that human greed in selling unsuspecting settlers lands naturally inhospitable for human settlements also contributed to the creation of the dust bowl.

The essay then examines the dynamics of wheat overproduction and its effect on the lands. The dry dusty conditions exacerbated health problems but proved conducive for the growth of grasshopper swarms that destroyed much of the harvest further bringing in misery. The efforts of the US government at restoring ecological balance were only partially successful and it was ultimately nature that restored the prairies to some semblance. In the ultimate analysis, it can be said that the Great American Dust Bowl was a man-made ecological disaster.

The Great American Dust Bowl: Natural or Man-Made Phenomenon?

Ecological disasters have numerous connotations. Some are attributable to nature, others occur due to man’s exploitation of natural resources and in some cases, it manifests as a combination of both. In all cases, the deleterious effects on nature and human living conditions trigger a host of responses that cover the socio-economic and administrative aspects of governance. The hard conditions faced by the inhabitants of the Great American Dust Bowl, a swathe of land in the high plains encompassing parts of the American states of Nebraska, Colorado, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico through the 1930s is remarkable in its scope and duration. During this period, the area faced an unprecedented drought leading to the creation of a ‘Dust Bowl’ where dust laid waste to vast areas of land making life exceedingly difficult. This essay examines the Dust Bowl phenomenon through the explorations of Timothy Egan’s book Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl with a view to arriving at the possible causes of this unique ecological disaster.

The American High Plains had always been a rain deficient area. The wide swathe of land with no natural obstructions allowed a free ‘fetch’ to the winds, which on building up whipped up dense dust storms that could obliterate towns, dwellings leaving behind nothing but “nubs sticking out of sterile brown earth (Egan 2)”. But the winds also brought clouds and rains as Egan evocatively puts that “without the wind, there was no water, no cattle, no life (5)”. As long as the cycle of winds and rain continued, the high plains regenerated. However, as larger and larger areas were brought under wheat production, the natural grasslands receded. Then in 1929, the Great Economic Depression started and rains too failed at the same time not only for the season “but for years on end (Egan 5)” leading to the creation of dry parched land where dust clouds rose up into the sky for thousands of feet causing ingression into every nook and cranny of man-made structures and humans alike. The intense levels of dust caused respiratory diseases which doctors called ‘Dust Pneumonia’ and the dryness charged humans with static electricity that made people wary of just shaking hands for the fear of getting a nasty electric shock. The dust forced families to give away their children to relatives and friends in other parts of the country to save them from health problems. Thus the dust storms not only affected the physical health of the inhabitants but also had adverse effects on familial cohesiveness.

However, how much of the human misery was man-made is a question that deserves examination from several angles. Egan reports that speculators and fraudsters sold vast tracts of high plains known to be inhabitable as glittering opportunities. “On Boise City’s imaginary streets, the buyers found stakes in the ground and flags flapping the wind (Egan 33)”. Thus unsuspecting settlers settled in areas where there was no development, no infrastructure that had terrain and climate inhospitable for human habitation. In cases such as Boise City, the disaster was basically man-made as nature had not ordained the area to be conducive for sustaining settled human habitation. The lands in various parts of the highland were suitable for growing wheat. This resulted in large tracts of land being brought under wheat acreage and in five years’ time from 1924 to 1929, wheat acreage in the Texas Panhandle grew from 876,000 to 2.5 million – a 300 percent increase (Egan 54). The idea was to cash on the high price of wheat as against rearing cattle or the risky business of oil prospecting. The result of this ‘wheat rush’ was that vast tracts of land lost their natural grass and the protection that is afforded to the topsoil. The successful wheat production created a supply far greater than the demand that led to a crash in wheat prices to “below $1.50 a bushel, then below a dollar, then seventy-five cents a bushel (Egan 59).”

While the Wall Street crash of 1929 did not really affect the inhabitants of the High Plains as most did not own stocks, what affected them was the crash in wheat prices. Coupled with the falling prices was the cessation of rain that wasted the crops planted. The effects of the Wall Street crash took two full years to reach the High Plains. In the town of Dalhart, the National Bank closed its shutters leaving angry townsmen wondering where their money had gone. The money had unfortunately been invested by the Bankers in Wall Street and had thus gone bankrupt as had over 256 banks in the nation by November 1930 (Egan 92). So now the gutsy folks of the High Plains were left without financial resources and unprecedented drought. The drought ushered in a ‘snow less’ winter (Egan 93) that denied the farmers the much-needed snow insulation for their nubs of wheat during the wintery months. The wheat hoarded due to poor food prices rotted away becoming a feast for mice and rabbits increasing their populations. The farmers worked harder tearing away at the soil to plant more wheat laying it bare with nothing to grow back as the rains had failed thus contributing to faster degradation of the land.

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The hot conditions were conducive for the breeding of insects that bred in huge numbers. Grasshoppers swarmed the wheat fields in their millions consuming in few minutes a human’s canned food supplies for winter. (Egan 128). Severe dust storms at times blanked out the sun causing the temperature to drop more than seventy degrees in less than 24 hours on one day in February 1933. The dust gathered from state to state was deposited elsewhere in such quantities that roads were wiped off the map and people like the” Shaws had to follow the telephone poles to get from one town to another (Egan 137)”. The production of the Texas panhandle area went down from six million bushels of wheat to a few truckloads. Cattle died or had to be killed to prevent the spread of diseases. In desperation, people approached ‘rainmakers’ who fleeced many towns in the High Plains before disappearing into the country. When that failed, people moved by their thousands initiating the largest migration in American history. By 1936 more than 850 million tons of topsoil had been blown off in the Southern plains and in the “Dustbowl, farmers lost 480 tons per acre (Egan 254)”. A public inquiry initiated by President Roosevelt opined that nature and its vagaries had not brought on this ecological disaster but were a result of “mistaken public policies (Egan 267).”

Egan’s book conclusively proves that overgrazing, over-cropping, and engaging in an unsustainable system of agriculture had converted the green prairies into a veritable dustbowl. Roosevelt’s ‘tree planting’ drive failed however, the massive government-driven conservation project where alfalfa and native species were used in addition proved to be partially successful. The government bought back 11.3 million acres of dusted over farm fields returning it to grasslands (Egan 309). Ultimately the strategy of allowing nature to heal and reintroducing native ecological fauna and flora helped the prairies partially recover the ecological balance. In the ultimate analysis, it can be said that the Great American Dust Bowl was a man-made ecological disaster.

References

Egan, Timothy. Worst Hard Times: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. NY: Mariner Books, 2006.

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"The Great American Dust Bowl: Natural or Man Made Phenomenon?" IvyPanda, 6 Dec. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/the-great-american-dust-bowl-natural-or-man-made-phenomenon/.

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IvyPanda. (2021) 'The Great American Dust Bowl: Natural or Man Made Phenomenon'. 6 December.

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IvyPanda. 2021. "The Great American Dust Bowl: Natural or Man Made Phenomenon?" December 6, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-great-american-dust-bowl-natural-or-man-made-phenomenon/.

1. IvyPanda. "The Great American Dust Bowl: Natural or Man Made Phenomenon?" December 6, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-great-american-dust-bowl-natural-or-man-made-phenomenon/.


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IvyPanda. "The Great American Dust Bowl: Natural or Man Made Phenomenon?" December 6, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-great-american-dust-bowl-natural-or-man-made-phenomenon/.

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