The Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl > Dust Storm. A wall of dirt and sand descends upon Spearman, Texas, on August 14, 1935

The Dust Bowl > Dust Storm Approaching Startford, Texas, 1930s

The Dust Bowl > Pare Lorenz, The Plow That Broke the Plains, 1936

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The Dust Bowl > Map of Erosion and Dust on the Plains

Migration > Traveling from South Texas to the Arkansas Delta, 1936

Migration > On the road to California, February 1936

Migration > John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

• Novel published in 1939

• Film in 1940 (closely follows the novel)

•Reinforced the belief that migrants fled the dust storms

• In fact, they fled for varied reasons, including drought, falling agricultural prices, and mechanization of agriculture

• 16,000 farmers fled dust storms

• 400,000 migrated, from a larger area in the Southwest

• Famous scene: farmer confronts a man who is about to level his house, used the plight of farmers to convey a sense of unfocused outrage shared by many others during the Depression - people couldn’t figure out who was to blame for the disaster

FSA > Arthur Rothstein, Steer Skull, Pennington County, South Dakota 1936

FSA > Arthur Rothstein, the same skull on dry sun-baked earth

FSA > Arthur Rothstein, the same skull, cows grazing in the background

FSA > Arthur Rothstein, Farmers and Sons, Cimmaron County, Oklahoma, 1936 (after the dust storm)

FSA > Arthur Rothstein, the same farmer pretending to flee a dust storm

FSA > Arthur Rothstein, the same farmer pretending to flee a dust storm

FSA > Walker Evans, Burroughs Photographs, Hale County, Alabama, 1936

FSA > Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, March 1936

FSA > Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother series, March 1936