Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry Exhibit Script

Panel 1

Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry

In the 1930s, people on the Great Plains endured one of America’s most destructive ecological disasters—the Dust Bowl. What caused fertile farms to turn to dust? How did people survive? What lessons can we learn from the Dust Bowl?

We can find answers to these questions in the region’s history and geography. Centuries of human interaction with the environment intensified between 1850 and 1930 as farmers believed that they could overcome the area’s variable weather and climate. The 1930s disaster taught them that they were wrong. However, people survived the dust and the drought by forging new community ties and by embracing new government programs. People also discovered a new respect for the power of nature. The Dust Bowl experience demonstrates the complex relationship between humans and the dynamic Great Plains environment.

Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm, 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionIn this classic Dust Bowl photograph taken by Resettlement Administration photographer Arthur Rothstein in April 1936, farmer Art Coble and his young sons walk through a dust storm to a building on their property in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. This photograph became one of the most widely reproduced images of the 20th century.

http://www.library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/allen.mp3LISTEN TO Hazel Allen tell how a dog led her future husband through a dust storm.SCAN THIS QR CODE

Panel 2

Humans and the Ecology of the Plains

Myth and reality, ebb and flow, boom and bust: these terms frame the ecological and economic contradictions of the human experience on the Great Plains. The key to that experience has often hinged on the adequacy of rainfall. Denser populations of Native Americans on the eastern Plains cultivated crops in an environment where precipitation is typically more certain and more plentiful. In contrast, humans on the westernPlains relied on the abundant resources provided by the bison to sustain them.

During periods of above average precipitation, however, human populations surged west into the semi-arid domain of the Plains’ short grasses. Farmers reaped the

agricultural rewards offered by the rich soils. Inevitably, the rains would diminish and people would adjust by migrating to the tall grass and plentiful rain east of the Plains. Humans repeated the cycle throughout prehistory and into the 20th century history of the Great Plains.

Bison herd at water, circa 1905Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionThe bison, commonly known as the American buffalo, provided abundant resources for sustaining life on the western Plains. Their typical habitat was open or semi-open grassland, sagebrush, semi-arid land, and scrubland. They were hunted primarily for their fur and meat, but Native Americans used bison for many other purposes: the horn to create spoons and toys, the thick hide for bowls and walls of tepees, the heart as a sack for dried meat, and the stomach as a cooking vessel.

Average annual precipitation in inches, Southern Great PlainsData courtesy National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration; Map by Jess Porter, University of Arkansas at Little RockAverage amounts of annual precipitation on the Great Plains decrease from east to west. Additionally, precipitation on the western margins of the Plains is less reliable from year-to-year and decade-to-decade. Periodic, recurrent drought is not uncommon.

Kiowa Indian camp near Anadarko, Oklahoma, circa 1899William E. Irwin, photographer© Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum,Oklahoma City, OklahomaThe Kiowa lived, hunted, and farmed in the Southern Plains region starting in the early nineteenth century. They were one of many Native American groups living on the Plains during this time. Others included the Pawnee, Cheyenne, Comanche, Osage, and Wichita.

Fairview Farm in Seward County, Kansas, 1910–1915F.M. Steele CollectionCourtesy of the Seward County Historical Society, Liberal, KansasIn periods of high precipitation on the Plains, people moved west and established farms in the short-grass areas. The Fairview Farm in Seward County, Kansas, was one example. In this photograph, a farmhouse, farm buildings, automobiles, mule teams, and wagons portray a productive enterprise.

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People of the Plains

Bison shared the Plains with other animals and with different groups of indigenous people for thousands of years. Native Americans farmed, hunted bison, and moved to different regions with the seasons. Comanche, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and others called the

Southern Plains home. After 1800, western expansion by white farmers began forcing tribal populations westward. In the 1830s, the United States government removed the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) to the eastern margins of the Great Plains where they set up farms and communities.

Native Americans increasingly shared the Plains with other people. Hispanic farmers and sheep ranchers from southern Texas moved into the southwestern Plains between the Arkansas and Hondo rivers after 1848. White settlers increased their westward migration after 1860 while small groups of African-Americans set up farming communities on the Plains in the late 1870s in places like Nicodemus, Kansas.

An increase in hunting led to the decline of the bison, and as the human presence in the region grew, towns and ranches occupied more of the Plains. Humans came to rely more on agriculture to sustain themselves. Farming made them dependent on a resource that had a long history of coming and going on the Great Plains—the rain.

Early homestead—Nicodemus Historic District, undatedPhotocopy of historic photographCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionThis undated photograph shows a historic homestead and inhabitants of Nicodemus, Kansas, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. After a period of decline, Nicodemus was named a National Historic Landmark in 1976, and is now a popular destination for visitors tracing African American history.

“Go to Kansas” broadside, 1877Nicodemus Town CompanyCourtesy of the Kansas State Historical SocietyThis broadside advertises the availability of residential lots for $5 in Nicodemus, Graham County, Kansas, and encourages African American emigration to the town. Nicodemus was first settled by former slaves in 1877, and is a prominent example of African Americans settling in the West in the nineteenth century.

Hunting Horse and daughters, circa 1908J.V. Dedrick, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionHunting Horse, a Kiowa patriarch, stands with his daughters for a photograph taken near Taloga, Oklahoma. The Kiowa were one of many Native American groups who had to share the Plains with other people from the mid-nineteenth century on, as whites, African Americans, Hispanics and other groups moved in to establish towns and farms.

Plains family in front of a sod house, circa 1900Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Photographic LibraryA family poses in front of their sod house somewhere on the Great Plains, with a well, farm horses, and wagons nearby. Because wood was in short supply on the Plains, many houses were built with rock-hard blocks of sod made from thickly rooted prairie grass. Roofs were made of sod or shingles. Commonly called “soddies” or “soddys,”

sod houses were easy to heat in the winter, cool in the summer, resistant to prairie fires, but subject to rain damage and leaks.

Panel 4

Artists of the Plains

The fields, the grass, the bison, and the dramatic swings in weather inspired several distinct traditions of art based on the ecology and cultures of the Great Plains. Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Comanche all created art that combined indigenous and European methods.

The grassland ecosystem also appeared in the paintings of Albert Bierstadt and other artists. These pictures found an audience interested in traditional scenes of the American West, but the work of Bierstadt and others also captured the dynamic environment of the Great Plains in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Like these artists, Willa Cather and other writers sought to capture the distinctive way of living found on the Plains. In Cather’s novels, the first one published in the early 1910s, a character’s fortune could change as quickly and capriciously as a hailstorm destroys a crop. Most people who bought Cather’s books lived well beyond the Plains. Communities in the grasslands, like the artists, became tied to larger economic systems that supported their agriculture along with their art and culture.

Cover of My Antonia (1918) and O Pioneers! (1913) by Willa Cather, reissue edition, 2011Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin HarcourtO Pioneers! is the story of the Bergsons, Swedish immigrants in Nebraska struggling to keep their land productive while My Antonia is about a Bohemian immigrant family, the Shimerdas, and their memorable oldest daughter, Antonia. Both books are part of WillaCather’s “Great Plains Trilogy.”

Willa Cather, 1921Courtesy of the Phillip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection, Archives and Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln LibrariesWilla Cather (1873–1947) lived in Nebraska from the age of nine, first on a farm and then in the town of Red Cloud. She graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1894. Her experiences with immigrant families and frontier life on the Plains form the subject matter and themes of many of her works. Cather’s “Great Plains Trilogy,” consisting of O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915) and My Antonia (1918), was a popular and critical success.

Howling Wolf Hunting Buffalo, 1874-75Howling Wolf (Southern Cheyenne Indian, 1849-1927)Pen, ink, and watercolor on ledger paper

Courtesy of Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio;Gift of Mrs. Jacob D. CoxHowling Wolf, a Southern Cheyenne warrior and artist, had a reputation as a brave fighter and was a leader in Cheyenne ceremonies. In 1875, he was arrested by the U.S. government and sent to prison at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida. There, he became a prominent Native American ledger artist. Ledger art was drawing and painting done by Native Americans in the ledger books used to keep inventories. Howling Wolf carefully depicted scenes from his life and from Cheyenne ceremonies in ink, and then filled them in with crayons, colored pencils, and watercolor in flat opaque tones. In this classic scene from nineteenth century Plains Indian life, he depicts himself as a young man hunting buffalo.

Hunting on the Plains, circa 1871Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt IvesLithographCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionA man on horseback brandishing a rifle rides next to his quarry, an American bison. Other hunters and bison are in the background. Currier & Ives published many lithographs showing scenes from life on the prairie during the last half of the nineteenth century.

Sunset of the Prairies, undatedAlfred Bierstadt (1830 – 1902)Oil on canvasCourtesy of the Art Renewal Center ® www.artrenewal.orgAlfred Bierstadt, a prolific German-American landscape painter, was one of many artists inspired by the beauty found in the rolling land and open skies of the Great Plains. Sunset of the Prairies shows two people on horseback gazing at a magnificent prairie sunset, an idealized scene which evokes a feeling of awe and respect for the natural world.

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Voices of the Plains

Artists who captured the intense connection of people to their environment in the Plains spoke for the many migrants, farmers, and shop keepers who had little time to draw or write fiction. Many farming families remembered their ancestors settling on the Plains in the late nineteenth century or before. These voices and stories can be found in the archives and oral history collections of universities, libraries, and historical societies across the United States.

Caroline Henderson became one of the most well-known chroniclers of life on the Plains. Henderson, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, arrived in Oklahoma in 1907 and wrote lyrical descriptions of the land. Plains natives Marvin Carnagey, Laverta

Carnagey, and Marg Scruggs recorded their memories of the land in oral history interviews. (See QR codes below.)

Henderson, the Carnageys, and Scruggs all spoke about the promise of owning land in the Great Plains and all described the dream of becoming independent farmers. Conditions on the Plains often made that dream of independence elusive, and each sought to understand what had caused the economic collapse and environmental adversity that visited farm families.

Caroline Boa Henderson and Will Henderson at the time of their wedding, 1908 Courtesy of David Grandstaff Caroline Boa Henderson (1877–1966) graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1901 and taught school in Iowa until 1907. After moving to Oklahoma to teach, she married Wilhelmine Eugene Henderson in 1908. They lived on a farm in Eva, Oklahoma, through the prosperous years of the wheat boom, during the worst years of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and after. Henderson wrote about life on the Plains for national publications such as the Practical Farmer. She vividly recounted the Hendersons’ loss of crops, animals, and other amenities of daily life during the Dust Bowl years in a series of letters to friends and family, many of which were published in a column (“Dust Bowl Diary”) in the prestigious Atlantic magazine. Henderson’s letters and other papers are found in the Mount Holyoke College Archives and Manuscripts Collection, http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/mountholyoke/mshm038.html

Letter from Caroline Henderson to Mrs. Alden, mother of Rose Alden, October 5, 1913 Courtesy of Mount Holyoke College Library, Information, and Technology Services— Archives and Special Collections Caroline Boa Henderson (1877–1966) wrote hundreds of letters to family and friends about weather conditions, crops, and daily life on the farm in Eva, Oklahoma, where she resided for nearly 60 years. In this 1913 letter to the mother of her lifelong friend, Rose Alden, a classmate from Mount Holyoke College, Henderson laments the fact that there was little snow the winter before and no spring rain that year. “Then we had a regular Egyptian experience with grasshoppers and blister beetles which destroyed things faster than they could be replanted.” Henderson’s letters reveal the ups and downs of farm life on the Plains. Two years after this letter, she was writing of a successful year with much optimism for the future.

Laverta Ruth Carnagey was born August 3, 1913 in Iowa. Her parents moved to Oklahoma when she was six months old to join her grandparents, who were homesteading south of Arnett, Oklahoma, in far northwest Oklahoma near the state border with Texas. As a young girl, she helped with the housework, but said she “never had to go out and work.” Laverta went to Catesby, a small country school, through the eighth grade, and then went to Laverne, Oklahoma, for high school. At that time, there were no school buses going to Laverne, so she had to board there during the week: “I went there Monday morning and then I went back home on Friday.” She attended high school for two years and then left to be married.

Marvin Carnagey (d. 2013) was born August 15, 1914 in northern Missouri. His parents separated when he was six and his father went to Oklahoma to join a brother who was homesteading there. Marvin and his two older brothers soon moved to Oklahoma to be with their dad. Marvin’s father didn’t have the money to keep the children, so they were all sent to different families—“he scattered us out, one here, one there, one somewhere else. That was in 1921.” Marvin started working in the fields when he was seven, and after that, “it was about all work and no play.” He would help with the fall field work and go to school near the first of December, and then stop attending school around the first of March to start plowing again.

Marguerite Scruggs (d. 2012) was born in 1920 in Lawton, Oklahoma. Her father had grown up on a farm near Lawton, where his family was homesteading. Her grandmother Scruggs, a school teacher, believed strongly in education, which influenced her son, Marg’s father, to put himself through college. At the age of five, Marg moved with her family to Sayre, Oklahoma, where her father became the cooperative extension agent for Beckham County, a job he held until he retired. She recalls the Wall Street collapse of 1929 and its repercussions, which endangered her father’s job. She also remembers Franklin D. Roosevelt taking office in 1933 and immediately closing all the banks. Marg herself earned a Ph.D from Iowa State University in home economics education.

LISTEN TO Marg Scruggs SCAN THIS QR CODE http://www.library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/scruggs.mp3

LISTEN TO Laverta Carnagey SCAN THIS QR CODE http://www.library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/lcarnagey.mp3

LISTEN TO Marvin Carnagey SCAN THIS QR CODE http://www.library.okstate.edu/ oralhistory/mcarnagey.mp3

Panel 6

Drought

Plains inhabitants faced a complex and highly variable environment featuring periods of wet weather and periods of drought. People of the Plains endured hostile weather phenomena such as tornados, blizzards, floods, hail storms, dust storms, and the constant wind. The short-lived tornado or the hail storm both posed less of a threat than the most serious weather hazard on the Plains: drought. The Plains has episodic, recurrent drought, meaning that people can experience plenty of rain for a period of time, but drought will always return.

Early government surveyors Zebulon Pike and Stephen H. Long traveled through the region during a time of drought in the early nineteenth century and called it “The Great American Desert.” Their description of the area as a wasteland illustrates the impact of

drought on the Plains environment. A few years of above average or below average precipitation might make a good or bad condition appear to be permanent. Migrants faced a contradiction between this challenging and unpredictable environment and the region’s promise of independence and profit.

Car driving over heavily eroded streambed in Oklahoma, 1930sU.S. Soil Conservation ServiceCourtesy of Oklahoma State University Library, Special Collections & University ArchivesDuring times of drought on the Plains, water sources such as this stream dried up and made farming nearly impossible.

LISTEN TO Aline Crouch talk about an Easter Sunday dust storm.SCAN THIS QR CODE http://www.library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/couch.mp3

Large drifts of soil piled up against a barn, 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionA farmer’s barn near Liberal, Kansas, is nearly buried by piles of dust. The “dust” is actually topsoil blown off fields by high winds during a severe drought in parts of the Plains.

Cow trying to graze on a windswept pasture, 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionFor centuries, constant wind and recurrent periods of drought on the Plains made conditions for growing crops and grazing animals difficult and unpredictable. This was true for the indigenous people of the Plains as well as for the settlers who began arriving in the nineteenth century. A lone cow grazing in sparse pasture on a farm in Ford County, Kansas, is a stark symbol of the ever-changing Plains environment.

Sparse vegetation in wind-eroded soil, Oklahoma, 1930sU.S. Soil Conservation ServiceCourtesy of Oklahoma State University Library, Special Collections & University ArchivesPart of the southern Plains landscape is semi-arid, featuring vegetation which does not require much water. During severe droughts and wind storms, this vegetation and other drought-resistant grasses are able to stay alive and provide sustenance to cattle, and sometimes, to humans. In Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time, Dust Bowl survivors tell of eating pickled tumbleweed for weeks on end.

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Railroad, Farms and American Dreams

Economic conditions on the Plains changed dramatically in the second half of the nineteenth century with the expansion of railroads into the region from the east. Some migrants to the Plains could start farming without buying or leasing land: the Pre-Emption Act (1841) and the Homestead Act (1862) let settlers apply to own land that they altered. Several railroad companies built tracks across the Plains in the 1850s and 1860s. Farmers used the new railroads to ship their crops to distant markets and to gain access to products brought to the region by rail.

Railroad companies received land from the federal government and worked with state governments and local officials to promote settlement. The railroads and local boosters wanted to replace the image of the Plains as a place of little water and a difficult climate with something more enticing. The railroads, government scientists, and land speculators tapped into an American belief that humans could improve the land by working it. They used the phrase “rain follows the plow” to convince farmers that plowing the land released moisture into the atmosphere, which, in turn, produced more rain.

“Rain follows the plow.” —Charles Dana Wilbur

Railroad construction workers, 1912F.M. Steele, photographerCourtesy of the Haskell County Historical Society, Sublette, KansasAtchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad construction workers stand on tracks being built in Haskell County, Kansas. Between 1871 and 1900, 170,000 miles were added to the nation’s growing railroad system, and building continued into the 20th century. The railroad opened the way for the settlement of the West, provided new economic opportunities, stimulated the development of towns and communities, and generally tied the country together.

An Oklahoma land claims office, no dateGeorge Grantham Bain CollectionCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints andPhotographs DivisionAt noon on April 22, 1889, a bugle sounded, signaling the beginning of the great Oklahoma Land Rush. Horsemen and people in wagons raced to stake their claims on two million acres of land in central Oklahoma which had been declared “open” by President Benjamin Harrison a month before. Those who could stay on the land for five years and improve it would become landowners.

“Millions of Acres” advertising circular, 1872Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionThe Burlington & Missouri River R.R. Co. offered land in Iowa and Nebraska at six percent interest and low prices, with ten years’ credit. The railroad offered free boarding

house rooms to interested buyers while they made their decisions. Railroad companies performed an important role as promoters of settlement and agricultural development in the West.

“Railroad Lands in Southwest Kansas” advertising circular, 1870sCourtesy of Kansas State Historical SocietyCalling southwest Kansas ideal for farming and ranching, the Atchison, Topeka &Santa Fe Railway Company offered woodland and prairie land with promises of “pure and abundant water,” and good soil for crops. A reference in the German language at the bottom of the circular shows the company’s intent to appeal to immigrants from Europe.

Panel 8

Machines and Markets over Nature

The theory of rain following the plow represented a general belief throughout the Plains during these years: Americans seemed sure of their superiority over nature. As migrants moved to the Plains in the decades on either side of 1900, companies sold them machines to alter the landscape of deep-rooted grass. Advertisements showed gleaming tractors and mechanical harvesters in fields of golden wheat.

The hope for profits and prosperity expressed in advertisements for farm machinery echoed the views of farmers themselves. Machines made plowing the fields easier, made the harvest easier, and seemingly brought rain. Rainfall did briefly increase, but not because of agriculture. Railroads carried the resulting crop to distant markets where buyers paid a high price for the wheat.

Farmers of the Plains during the twenty years after 1900 generally made a good living despite periodic droughts in some regions. People saw hope ahead, an optimism encouraged by the steady amount of rain that fell between 1900 and 1920 in many places. In 1915, Oklahoma writer and farmer Caroline Henderson noted: “It has been a full year for us, with more of encouragement for the future.” Henderson’s letters contained much more depth and feeling than the advertisements selling machines, but she expressed a similar confidence about human ability to improve the land.

Wallis tractor advertising booklet, 1928Courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-97284In order to turn over the prairie landscape of deep-rooted grass and replace it with soil that was easier to plant, farmers needed tractors. Many farming implement companies offered the latest in machinery that promised to make the farms profitable and prosperous.

Tractors breaking sod, 1925Courtesy of Kansas State Historical Society

Four tractors from the Trued Brothers Tractor Company break land at the Simon Fishman farm in Greeley County, Kansas, northeast of the town of Tribune. Changing the land by plowing brought about the rapid disappearance of Plains grasslands.

McCormick-Deering Harvester-Thresher advertising poster, 1927Courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-11418This advertisement reinforces the message that machines make plowing and harvesting easier and help bring profit and prosperity, as well as rain. Rainfall in much of the Plains region from 1900–1920 was adequate, and farmers expected it to remain so.

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Changing the Land

Farmers and their machines radically changed the land of the Plains by converting millions of acres of native grassland to cultivated fields in the years leading up to the Dust Bowl. While farmers expanded their crops and the size of their profits, the removal of the deep, soil-stabilizing roots provided by native grasses set the stage for wind erosion. Between 1900 and 1920 the Plains had abnormally high amounts of rain, so farmers did not notice the potentially negative effects of transforming the landscape.

Many farmers viewed this modification of the land as a marked improvement. Some planted trees surrounding their fields in hopes of increasing rainfall. Marg Scruggs remembered looking out on “the forest of small trees” that her family planted on their farm in Sayre, Oklahoma. On the Scruggs farm, those trees outlined a field planted with wheat.

Encouraged by increasing wheat prices, many farmers grew only wheat after 1900 rather than rotating a variety of crops. This increased their profits, but planting only one type of crop (mono-cropping) robbed the land of nutrients and replaced erosion-preventing grasses with shallow-rooted grains. Mono-cropping would increase with the widespread use of tractors after World War I.

Prairie grasses being plowed under, Kansas, 1930sU.S. Soil Conservation ServiceCourtesy of Oklahoma State University Library, Special Collections & University ArchivesA man using a four-horse team creates a contour of furrows in turning over short-grass prairie so that the field can be planted. The elimination of deep-rooted prairie grasses in favor of shallow-rooted crops was partly responsible for the widespread destruction caused by the high winds and drought of the Dust Bowl period.

Field of wheat near Hydro, Oklahoma, 1939Russell Lee, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Wheat prices steadily increased early in the twentieth century and farmers’ profits rose accordingly. After 1900, many farmers grew only wheat, which has shallow roots compared to native grasses.

A steam tractor busts sod, between 1891 and 1912F. M. Steele, photographerCourtesy of the Haskell County Historical Society, Sublette, KansasA sod-busting Reeves steam tractor turns over the soil in this striking image by F.M. Steele, a photographer who took thousands of photographs of cowboys and the prairie, and at one time had studios in over a dozen towns in Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. This powerful steam tractor could turn a dozen furrows at one time.

Reclaiming the prairie, circa 1912Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionThis unique panoramic photograph from the turn of the century shows people working with a gasoline-powered plow and road machine to reclaim prairie land for crop farming.

Panel 10

False Dawn

In the first decades of the twentieth century the success of wheat farmers appeared to prove right the predictions of prosperity. Machines and hard work could make the Plains a region of profitable family farms. From 1900 to 1930 the number of farms, farmers, bushels of wheat, and acres of land under cultivation increased throughout the Great Plains.

Although farmers did not know it at the time, this period of prosperity relied on temporary conditions. Parts of the Plains received record rainfall in the 1910s and 1920s. For example, from 1911 to 1923, Boise City, Oklahoma, averaged 28 inches of rain, nearly 10 inches above the modern average. Caroline Henderson wrote during this time: “the unusual moisture lures us on to hope for a wheat crop.” Soon after, Henderson rejoiced in the “life-restoring rain.” Additionally, in the 1920s farmers increasingly relied on a strain of wheat, Turkey Red, originally brought by Russian immigrants to the Plains in the 1870s. Turkey Red wheat grew very well in the rich soils of the Plains.

Along with better seeds and more rain, the price of land went up in the Plains between 1900 and 1930. Farmers could borrow against the increased value of their property if they needed capital. Most farmers did not see the abundant rain or the high real estate prices as temporary.

People standing in a field of tall corn, August, 1907F.M. Steele, photographerCourtesy of the Finney County Historical Society, Garden City, Kansas

In western Kansas, corn and grain sorghums, as well as wheat, were common crops on farms. During the first 20 years of the twentieth century, abundant rainfall and record-breaking crop yields seemed to prove that turning over the prairie for crops would lead to profits and prosperity. The flourishing corn in this photograph is on the John William Wampler farm in Finney County, Kansas.

Cabbage patch, 1912F.M. Steele, photographerCourtesy of the Haskell County Historical Society, Sublette, KansasA flourishing cabbage patch on a small farm in southwestern Kansas shows that there was enough rain in this area during the first decades of the twentieth century to successfully grow many different kinds of crops. Adding interest to the background of this photograph are farm buildings, a windmill, a corral, and a person seated in a horse-drawn carriage.

A record load of wheat for market, circa 1910Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionA large wagon load of sacks of wheat sits alongside railroad tracks which will take the wheat to market. Although this scene is west of the actual Dust Bowl drought area inColorado, it is typical of the record-breaking wheat yields that were produced and sent to market in the Plains during the 1910s and 1920s, resulting in satisfying profits for farmers.

“This year for variety an unprecedented amount of rain and snow… the unusual moisture lures us on to hope for a wheat crop in 1929.” — Caroline Henderson, December 19, 1928

Panel 11

No More Rain

“The rain for which we were hoping so eagerly when I wrote last has never come. Indeed, we have had no effective moisture since early June.” —Caroline Henderson, September 17, 1932

The prosperity did not last. The temporary environmental and economic conditions that encouraged the boom on the Plains ended in the early 1930s. An epic drought started in 1931, with a center in the Oklahoma panhandle. For much of the 1930s, significant portions of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas, North and South Dakota, and New Mexico experienced severe drought. Climatologists now deem the drought one of the worst in the region in the last five hundred years.

Although wind erosion occurred on unplowed land, the expansion of agriculture in the Plains since the 1880s intensified the effects of the drought on farms. Agriculture fared much worse than in previous periods of diminished rainfall. Large expanses of the earth

lay bare. No longer protected by the grass and its deep roots, the soil dried and turned to a fine dust that the winds spread everywhere.

The lack of rain destroyed the sense of control over nature that Plains farmers had enjoyed during the boom years. The rain did not follow the plow, and new farming machines did little to save crops that could not grow without water. Caroline Henderson wrote that their farm had “no rain for weeks.”

A farmer shows how high his wheat should be, 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionJohn Frederick, a farmer in Grant County, North Dakota, on the northern edge of the Dust Bowl drought area, shows with his outstretched arm that his wheat would be a good three feet taller if there were sufficient rain. An epic drought began in 1931 and continued for much of the 1930s in portions of North Dakota and other Plains states.

Soil blown by Dust Bowl winds creates drifts on a Kansas farm, March 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionBecause of the widespread planting of shallow-rooted crops like wheat, soil was no longer anchored by the extensive root system of prairie grasses. Wind was a constant feature of Plains weather, and tons of topsoil blew across the Plains and buried farm buildings like this one in Liberal, Kansas, during the 1930s drought.

A man stands on a soil-drifted fence, Oklahoma, 1930sU.S. Soil Conservation ServiceCourtesy of Oklahoma State University Library, Special Collections & University ArchivesIn a typical scene from the Dust Bowl period in Oklahoma, a lone figure looks out over a forlorn, wind-eroded landscape. Drifts of soil have nearly buried the fence, and no crops or vegetation are visible for miles.

Dead longhorn cow, Nebraska, 1934Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionNebraska was one of the Plains states which experienced severe drought for much of the 1930s. With no water to drink and little vegetation to graze on, this longhorn in SiouxCounty, Nebraska, died along with hundreds of thousands of other cattle in ranching and farming areas.

Panel 12

Black Sunday

The winds and the dry fields produced epic dust storms. Perhaps the largest one occurred on April 14, 1935, a day known as Black Sunday, when the sunlight grew dim

and the sun was blocked by a great dust-filled maelstrom. Although the Plains had always endured dust storms, the storms increased in frequency between 1932 and 1936 before diminishing in 1938. Some areas endured fifty major dust storms annually during the Dust Bowl years.

Caroline Henderson described a dust storm in “Dust to Eat,” a report to the United States Secretary of Agriculture. “There are days when for hours at a time we cannot see the windmill fifty feet from the kitchen door. There are days when for briefer periods one cannot distinguish the windows from the solid wall because of the solid blackness of the raging storm.”

Marg Scruggs described “Black Sunday” in an oral history interview: “At about 4 p.m., we looked outside and the whole northwest sky and north sky was just black as midnight... it was just black, the blackest I’ve ever seen.” Marvin Carnagey later wrote a poem about that day: “I thought it was the end of the world, and we were all going to Hell. A black cloud rolled up in the northern sky.” The following Sunday, church attendance on the Plains reached all-time highs.

Car with dust storm approaching, March, 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionIn this ominous scene, a car appears to be followed by heavy black clouds of dust as it drives down a desolate road in the Texas Panhandle. Although the height of the Dust Bowl drought was in 1936, dust storms were common from 1932 through 1938. Some storms reached far beyond the drought area. In May 1934, dust blizzards propelled by forty and fifty mile-per-hour winds caked cities as far away as New York and Washington, D.C. In Chicago, millions of pounds of dust were deposited on the city, cutting off sunlight and causing widespread respiratory problems. Even ships 300 miles off the Atlantic coast were covered with dust.

Colorado dust storm, circa 1936J.H. Ward, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionDuring the Dust Bowl years, some areas endured up to 50 dust storms per year. People reported that chickens would roost at midday, and that birds fell from the sky, suffocating in the thick dust. People and animals suffered and sometimes died from “dust pneumonia” after inhaling too much dust into their lungs.

Dust Bowl regionData courtesy Soil Conservation Service, 1940; Map by Jess Porter, University of Arkansas at Little RockThe highlighted region illustrates a typical spatial definition of the Dust Bowl. These boundaries are based on wind erosion maps produced by the Soil Conservation Service for the period 1935-1940. The boundary of the Dust Bowl region, however, was inconstant. The location and distribution of dust storms, wind erosion, the most severe drought, farm failures, and human migration varied from year to year.

LISTEN TO Eloise Prewitt recall Black Sunday. SCAN THIS QR CODE http://www.library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/prewitt.mp3

Dust storm in Elkhart, Kansas, May, 1937Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionDuring the 1930s, residents of towns across the Plains endured dust deluges that prevented them from carrying out daily activities. People stayed inside during the worst of the storms, and businesses would shut down and schools close. At night, street lights were often invisible. Stories were told of city people becoming so disoriented that they could be across the street from their homes or businesses and have no idea of where they were.

A man walks around his car during a dust storm, undatedH.H. Finnell CollectionCourtesy of Oklahoma State University Library, Special Collections & University ArchivesIn a photograph probably taken in Oklahoma, a man and his car are stranded in a dust storm. During dust storms, so much static electricity built up between the ground and airborne dust that it could short out car engines and radios. People would have to abandon their cars and walk. To avoid stalling, motorists often grounded their cars by dragging chains from the back fenders.

“ I thought it was the end of the world, and we were all going to Hell.” —Marvin Carnagey

Panel 13

Dust

In the absence of a dramatic storm, dust still swept through farms. Dust blocked roads, buried fences, damaged tractors, and accumulated like great snow drifts against buildings. In just a few hours, every room inside a house could be covered with a thin layer of dust.

Marg Scruggs described her new routine for setting the table for lunch: “At noontime, when it was lunch, it was so dark, and so much dirt. If you set the table, you didn’t set your plates up; you always laid them face down until you got ready to eat. You’d cover up as much stuff as you could while you were fixing food.”

The dust that swept across the farms was much finer than typical house dust—it resembled talcum powder. People cleaned constantly. In a letter to a friend, Caroline Henderson described “the dizzying drift of silt, ground to a fine whitish powder, which gives a ghastly appearance of unreality to the most familiar landscapes. On such days we suffer from a painful sense of helplessness and utter frustration.”

Many worried about the fine dust entering their lungs —“dust pneumonia” killed many animals and people. Yet farmers on the Plains endured and continued to fight the grit. Women swept dust off porches knowing that they would sweep the porch again and again.

Buried machinery in the Dust Bowl, May, 1936Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm implements and machinery lie buried in dust on this farm in Dallas, a small town in central South Dakota not far from the state line with Nebraska. Dust Bowl effects were felt in parts of South Dakota and a number of other Plains states.

“There are days when for hours at a time we cannot see the windmill fifty feet from the kitchen door.” —Caroline Henderson

Masks protect the lungs from dust, 1935Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical SocietyResidents of the town of Liberal, in Seward County, southwestern Kansas, stand in front of the local Red Cross building wearing masks to protect their lungs from blowing dust and to prevent “dust pneumonia.” Some children in the hardest hit Dust Bowl areas wore dust masks to and from school.

Raising a fence out of the dust, April, 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionA farmer and a young boy try to raise a fence that has been swamped by dust to prevent it from being completely buried. Their farm is in Cimarron County, in the far western Oklahoma Panhandle near the Colorado and New Mexico borders.

Collection of Dust Bowl newspaper headlines, 1935–1942Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionHeadlines tell the story of the havoc created by dust: “Three year old Benson boy survives almost 20 hours in raging dust storm,” “Farmers fight to stop losses by dust storms,” “Two planes make forced landings as black blizzard hides airport.” Experts estimated that 850 million tons of topsoil blew off the Plains in just one year—1935.

A Texas farm endures in the dust, 1938Dorothea Lange, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionA bleak, dry, and dust blown landscape surrounds a farmhouse in the Coldwater area north of Dalhart, a town in northwest Texas near the Oklahoma border. People were still living in this house at the time, but most of the houses in the district had been abandoned. The Dalhart area experienced many “black blizzards,” terrifying and violent storms in which dirt was carried as high as 8,000 feet, sometimes accompanied by thunder and lightning.

Panel 14

Enduring

The extreme conditions of the Dust Bowl challenged farm families to find new strategies to survive. In addition to enduring the overwhelming dust, residents of the region witnessed the death of their farm animals. Caroline Henderson wrote to a friend of spending “the better part of a night during the week trying to save two of the best young cows” from the effects of the dust.

In response to the hostile conditions, farm families created self-help groups to save their way of life. They made a virtue out of staying on their farms through the dark years. Women often added new duties to their already extensive work. In Kansas, for example, women created cooperatives that shared food, clothing, and chores. Families throughout the Plains gathered together to eat communal meals.

In Dalhart, Texas, farmers formed a “last man” club, each of them pledging to be the “last man” to leave the region. These strategies helped many people remain on their farms through the Dust Bowl and long after it ended. Caroline Henderson and her husband did not leave their land until the 1960s. Marg Scruggs lived in Oklahomauntil her death in 2012. The Carnageys grew up on separate farms and met after the Dust Bowl. Although Marvin died in 2013, Laverta still lives in the region today.

South Dakota Dust Bowl farm family, 1936Courtesy of National Archives and Records AdministrationA family living near Pierre, South Dakota, shares a meal together. A five-year battle with drought, dust, and grasshoppers exhausted all of their resources. But they stayed on their farm.

LISTEN TO Lonetta McQuigg recall Black Sunday. SCAN THIS QR CODE http://www.library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/mcquigg.mp3

Oklahoma pioneer woman, 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionThis woman had come to the Oklahoma Panhandle to farm long before the Dust Bowl years, and stayed with her family throughout the environmental and economic crisis of the 1930s. Millions of people like her proudly endured, vowing not to leave their homes, and made the best of their situation until the hard times were over.

Fighting the dust with irrigation, 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionA man digs an irrigation ditch in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. The drought of the 1930s impressed on farmers that water was absolutely essential to their crops and livestock, and that they could not count on nature to reliably supply it.

The son of a farmer in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionThis boy’s family stayed on their farm through the years of dust, as did millions of other farmers and ranchers in the Dust Bowl region.

(Below) A farmer removes dust drifts from a highway, 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionPeople who stayed on their farms and in their homes during the years of drought and dust pitched in to improve conditions for everyone. This man used his team of horses to help unblock the roads near Guymon, Oklahoma, so that cars and other vehicles could get through. The sharing of food, clothing, and chores was characteristic of a communal effort to save a way of life during the Dust Bowl years.

Panel 15

Difficult Decisions

People of the Plains faced difficult personal questions during the Dust Bowl years. Many believed that the prosperity of the 1920s came from hard work—farmers had faith that they controlled their own destiny. When the weather turned hostile, farmers wondered what they had done to deserve such bad fortune. Caroline Henderson wrote that many people believed “the drought is a direct punishment for our sins.”

Some people left their farms and moved to the nearest urban center, while others packed their meager belongings and went west, especially to California. Migrant families struggled in the West as they moved throughout the region to find work. Many spent their nights in automobile camps near the agricultural fields where they earned what they could. Many more farmers stayed. These families faced a series of difficult decisions about whether they could survive on their farms. Historians estimate that seventy to eighty percent of people in the region of the Dust Bowl remained on their land.

Some did not have enough money to leave. Lula Wood, who grew up on an Oklahoma farm, told interviewers: “When you’ve got a bunch of kids, where do you go? There’s no money or anything to go on, so we were too poor to leave.” Other farmers had the option of moving but did not want to leave their land. Gerald Dixon lived on a farm inOklahoma during the 1930s and thanked his parents for staying. “A lot of people left, but my folks decided to stay and I’m glad they stayed.”

A homeless family in California, 1939Dorothea Lange, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionA Dust Bowl refugee family and their pets walk along U.S. Highway 99, near Brawley,

Imperial County, California. Homeless and without a car, they have walked from Phoenix, Arizona, where they picked cotton for awhile, and are bound for San Diego to find work and government relief. Many migrants were forced to move frequently in order to maintain a steady income. They followed harvests for different crops around the state of California.

An automobile camp for Dust Bowl refugees, 1937Dorothea Lange, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionAround eighty families fleeing the Dust Bowl lived temporarily at this automobile camp near Calipatra, California. They paid fifty cents a week to stay and were able to work at low-paying agricultural jobs nearby to sustain themselves. Many auto camps sprang up along Highway 99, which stretched almost the entire length of the Central Valley ofCalifornia, because there were agricultural jobs available nearby.

A family flees the drought, 1937Dorothea Lange, photographerCourtesy of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential LibraryNear Tracy, California, a family of five who left the drought area seven months ago is stranded on U.S. Highway 99 with car trouble. The car roof and a small trailer hold all of their possessions. They have no money, and one of their children is ill. Such stories were replicated thousands of times as people sought to start a new life in a different area of the country.

An Oklahoma family in a California migrant labor camp, 1939Dorothea Lange, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionThis Oklahoma family of 13 is living in a tent in a Farm Security Administration (FSA) migrant labor camp in Brawley, California, during the pea harvest. The harvest provided work for the father, eldest son and eldest daughter, while the mother took care of the other nine children. Interviewed by the photographer, the father said, “I’ve made my mistakes and now we can’t go back. I’ve got nothing to farm with.” The FSA camps, administered by a small government staff, provided a safe temporary living space for refugees from the Dust Bowl.

“When you’ve got a bunch of kids, where do you go? There’s no money or anything to go on, so we were too poor to leave.” —Lula Wood, Oklahoma farmerLISTEN TO Lula Wood discuss being too poor to leave.http://www.library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/wood.mp3SCAN THIS QR CODE

Panel 16

The Art of the Dust Bowl

The intense physical and psychological experiences of living through dust storms, enduring terrible conditions, or leaving homes on the Plains inspired many artists to try to capture the essence of the Dust Bowl. Woody Guthrie sang ballads about the suffering of ordinary folk on the Plains. Alexandre Hogue painted pictures that illustrated the altered landscape of the Dust Bowl.

Photographers for the Farm Security Administration, a government agency, provided evidence to the world about the Dust Bowl experience through documentation of human suffering, dust storms, and agricultural loss. Dorothea Lange’s photographs provided a human connection to the Dust Bowl. The lines on the women’s faces and the unwashed hair of children conveyed a collective destitution.

The most popular piece of art from the Dust Bowl period remains John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Published in 1939, the novel portrays the experiences of the Joad family, a group of migrants from Oklahoma to California. Despite differences from the typical Dust Bowl experience, the trials of the Joad family cemented a popular conception of the Dust Bowl as a disaster for common people from the middle of the United States. Steinbeck’s novel also started the process of understanding the tragedy. Who had caused this disaster: humans, God, capitalism, or something else?

Dust Bowl, 1933Alexandre Hogue (1898–1994)Oil on canvasSmithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of InternationalBusiness Machines CorporationAlexandre Hogue was a young, Missouri-born, Texas-raised artist who was just making a name for himself in the art world when the Dust Bowl ravaged the Plains states. Having worked on a farm in Texas, he had seen firsthand the devastation created by the drought. Hogue created several paintings with Dust Bowl themes. In this one, angular fence posts and spikes of barbed wire are the foreground for blood-red dust that obstructs the sun. Tire tracks run away from the farm, as though the family has just left.

Sanora Babb, photographed in California, late 1930sPhotographer unknownCourtesy of www.sanorababb.comWhose Names Are Unknown, by Sanora BabbUniversity of Oklahoma Press, 2004Courtesy of the University of Oklahoma PressSanora Babb (1907–2005) was born in the Oklahoma Panhandle and grew up on the Colorado frontier. She wrote Whose Names Are Unknown based on notes she compiled while working with Dust Bowl migrant families in California’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) camps in the late 1930s. Her notes may have been shown to author John Steinbeck by FSA personnel. The novel is the story of the Dunne family as

they struggle to survive in the Oklahoma Panhandle, flee to California, and face even worse circumstances as migrant workers. Babb received a contract with Random House for “this exceptionally fine” novel, but it was cancelled when John Steinbeck’s similarly themed Grapes of Wrath became a bestseller. Babb’s book remained shelved for 65 years, until 2004, the year before her death, when the University of Oklahoma Press published it to great critical acclaim. It was called “a long-forgotten masterpiece” and “an American classic.”

Sand dunes on a farm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionFresh out of Columbia University in his native New York City, Arthur Rothstein (1915–1985) began work as a photographer in 1936 for the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency that later became part of the Farm Security Administration (FSA). During his five years with the FSA, Rothstein took significant and iconic photographs of rural and small town America. His innovative compositions, many featuring dramatic lighting and unusual perspectives, made him one of the most renowned photojournalists of his generation. He later was director of photography for Look and Parade magazines. His most famous photograph appears on the first panel in this exhibition.

Migrant grandmother and sick baby, Arizona, 1940Dorothea Lange, photographerCourtesy of the National Archives and Records AdministrationCommissioned by the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) took masterful photographs of Dust Bowl migrant families that were works of art in themselves. They sensitively documented a massive exodus from drought and dust to hoped-for better lives in California and other places. Many of Lange’s photographs have become icons of this historical period. Their dynamic compositions and dramatic angles and lighting borrow techniques from the language of modernism in art.

Woody Guthrie, 1943Photograph by Al AumullerCourtesy of Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc.Woody Guthrie (1912–1967), a native Oklahoman, was a singer-songwriter and folk musician whose artistic legacy includes hundreds of songs, poems, paintings, and prose works. Many of his songs, such as “This Land Is Your Land,” have become staples of the canon of American music. Guthrie moved to Texas in 1931 and established a family there, but during the Dust Bowl years, he found it impossible to support them. Like hundreds of “Dust Bowl refugees,” Guthrie hitchhiked, rode trains, and walked to California, taking small jobs along the way. In exchange for room and board, he often played his guitar and sang traditional folk and blues songs, and songs he had written, including “Dust Bowl Troubadour” and other works about the drought.

Alternative version of lyrics to “Dust Bowl Refugee” by Woody Guthrie,Los Angeles, California, February 12, 1939© Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

Courtesy of Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc.

Panel 17

Looking for Answers

Farmers who stayed in the Plains during the Dust Bowl thought about the economics of agriculture and wondered what the government might do to help. Caroline Henderson’s letters sparkle with analysis about the economics of growing wheat. Henderson wrote that the “important point is not the market price of our products but their actual value in exchange for the things we need.” At one point, Henderson considered socialism as a possible remedy to her region’s problems, writing of “the merits of socialism as a method of distributing the wealth created by all working together.” Few people on the Plains followed Henderson in looking to socialism for answers.

Marg Scruggs remembered trying to figure out how the market for wheat affected her farm. “One of the first things that happened, the price for farm products was terribly low, partly because of over-production.” These letters and memories point to the mental strength of those who lived through the Dust Bowl and also speak to the farmers’ concern about the economic system. Some farmers turned to the government for support. Soon farmers in the Plains would see a wide array of government programs aimed at their farms, and aimed at the dust.

Dr. Tugwell (right) and farmer in Texas Panhandle, 1936 Arthur Rothstein, photographer Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Rexford Guy Tugwell (1891–1979) was an agricultural economist and the architect of many farm and social services programs developed during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first administration. As undersecretary in the Department of Agriculture, Tugwell helped create the Agricultural Adjustment Administration to manage yields of key crops by providing subsidies for non-production. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Soil Conservation Service in 1933 and the Resettlement Administration in 1935, both of which benefited people severely affected by the Dust Bowl crisis. Tugwell made a number of visits to the Plains during this time to monitor the effects of new government programs on struggling farmers.

Dust Bowl migrant camp council meeting, Farmersville, California, 1939 Dorothea Lange, photographer Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division The Farm Security Administration (FSA) opened the first federally operated camp for migrants from the Dust Bowl in 1937, in Arvin, California. The camps were intended to resolve poor sanitation and public health and child care problems among migrants, and to provide a safe place to live. Each camp had a small staff of administrators, but responsibility for daily activities and governance fell to the residents themselves through camp courts and camp councils, such as this council in the Farmersville FSA camp.

Editorial cartoon about Dust Bowl farm relief measures, no date Morris (J.M.?) in the Hoboken Observer Courtesy of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library The need for farm relief in the Dust Bowl region was viewed with a degree of suspicion in some quarters, but in this editorial cartoon, the desperate farmer’s perspective was portrayed as “Sure, I’ll try anything once!” The Roosevelt Administration instituted a variety of measures to get farm families back on their feet as quickly as possible.

Mass meeting poster, Burleigh County, North Dakota, 1937 Russell Lee, photographer Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Labor groups called for a community meeting in Bismarck, North Dakota, saying “Something must be done immediately to save mankind and beasts from real suffering” as a result of the drought. The organizers entreated, “This is your meeting, you are expected to be present with all your friends and neighbors.” Working together to share food, labor, and other necessities was the answer to immediate crises in many areas of the Dust Bowl.

President Roosevelt visits a family receiving drought relief, North Dakota, 1936 Arthur Rothstein, photographer Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division President Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected by a large majority in 1932, toured Dust Bowl states in 1936 to see firsthand how local and federal programs were aiding drought-stricken farmers. In his September 6, 1936, “Fireside Chat” radio broadcast, he recounted his western trip and spoke of seeing “fields of wheat blasted by heat,” and “brown pastures that would not support one cow.” But he cautioned, “I would not have you think for a single minute that there is permanent disaster in these drought regions” and promised help from the federal government.

Panel 18

Government Programs

State and federal programs to aid farmers in the Dust Bowl region increased in the late 1930s. The Drought Relief Service purchased cattle at risk of starvation, processed the cattle fit for consumption, and distributed the meat to needy families. The Farm Security Administration ran camps for migrant workers. The Soil Erosion Service, established in 1933, purchased land most susceptible to erosion and set it aside for what would eventually become part of the United States National Grasslands. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1933 subsidized farmers for leaving some plots of land fallow in an effort to boost commodity prices.

Farmers accepted government financial aid such as crop subsidies, but many people on the Plains had difficulty accepting food from the government. Marvin Carnagey remembered that his wife did not want to go to a state food bank in Oklahoma: “It

embarrassed her to go, but she went, and she got a half a dozen grapefruit, and she said that it wasn’t worth the embarrassment.” Carnagey’s memory illustrates the crisis of identity for farmers on the Plains in the 1930s. Before the Dust Bowl many felt in control of their own destinies, and believed that hard work would bring independence and profits. The years of drought shattered their sense of control over the environment.

An Oklahoma farmer pumps water to parched fields, 1936Arthur Rothstein, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionThis farmer in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, is wetting his dry fields with water from a well. Because there is little surface water in the Great Plains that can be used for irrigation, farmers had to begin tapping the water held in aquifers underground. Even during the bleak Dust Bowl years, federal and local government agencies found ways to build irrigation systems, develop groundwater irrigation techniques, and provide education for farmers.

“America Has Plenty of Food for Everyone” poster, 1936Agricultural Adjustment Administration, U.S. Department of AgricultureCourtesy of Special Collections, National Agricultural LibraryTo help the country recover from the Depression and the Dust Bowl, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to boost the prices of farm commodities. He set up the AgriculturalAdjustment Administration (AAA), which paid farmers to reduce livestock numbers and not plant some of their land. This poster was designed to show the success of this AAA policy. Dust Bowl farmers were among the recipients of grants to limit wheat and cotton production.

“Plains Farms Need Trees” poster, circa 1940Joseph Dusek, Illinois WPA Art Project, for the Prairie States Forestry Project,Lincoln, NebraskaCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionThis poster emphasized the importance of trees in preventing wind erosion, preserving moisture, and protecting crops. Thirty-seven days after he took office in March 1933,President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and ordered it to plant more than 200 million trees from the U.S. border with Canada to Abilene, Texas, to help keep topsoil in place. The CCC, known as “Roosevelt’s Tree Army,” also taught farmers techniques such as terracing to prevent wind erosion.

Group of children near U.S. Department of Agriculture billboard, 1941Robert Hemming, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs DivisionMexican immigrants to the United States who owned small farms or worked picking crops were severely affected by the Depression and the Dust Bowl. Many of them left drought-ridden Texas and other areas of the southwest for California. The Farm Security Administration (FSA) sponsored migrant camps for Mexican immigrants, such as this one in El Rio, California.

Panel 19

Studying the Dust Bowl

Like Plains farmers and government experts in the 1930s, researchers today still seek to learn from the Dust Bowl. Studies by social and physical scientists have produced a broad array of scientific literature since the first wave of New Deal era explanations. Some scholars focus on the economic forces driving agriculture in the Plains during the period. Some examine the endurance, cooperation, and creative responses of local communities to the harsh conditions, including widespread irrigation that uses groundwater. Yet others emphasize the application of improved climate data and atmospheric models to enhance our understanding of the past and to predict future drought-based hazards.

Although scholars continue to explore the Dust Bowl, the general public’s knowledge of the event has eroded. The Federal agencies that blossomed in the immediate wake of the Dust Bowl have helped wipe the dust from the public’s collective memory. Younger generations within the Dust Bowl region know little about what happened and why. Living in an area prone to recurrent drought and facing new environmental challenges, residents can draw on two strong traditions. Resilient communities provide a rich collective memory, while science offers strategies to live within the limits of the environment.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived theGreat American Dust Bowl, by Timothy EganHoughton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin HarcourtTo chronicle the events of the Dust Bowl, Timothy Egan, a former national correspondent for The New York Times, focuses on the personal stories of settlers who came to the Plains with energy and high hopes for the future, and then watched with growing despair as nature turned against them. The Worst Hard Time was awarded the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2006.

Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, by Donald WorsterOxford University Press, 1979, 25th anniversary edition, 2004Courtesy of Oxford University PressFirst published in 1979, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s helped to define the new field of environmental history. In a 25th anniversary edition, authorDonald Worster, Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas, shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it, and reflects on the state of the Plains today and the threat of a new Dust Bowl.

Letters from the Dust Bowl, by Caroline Henderson; edited by Alvin O. TurnerUniversity of Oklahoma Press, 2001Courtesy of the University of Oklahoma Press

Caroline Boa Henderson (1877–1966) and her husband lived on a farm in Eva, Oklahoma, before, during, and after the Dust Bowl years. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Henderson vividly recounted their experiences living on the Plains in letters to friends and family written between 1908 and 1966. Her letters, many of which were published in the Atlantic magazine in the 1930s in a column titled“Letters from the Dust Bowl,” are collected in this volume.

Rooted in Dust: Surviving Drought and Depression in Southwestern Kansas, by Pamela Riney-KehrbergUniversity Press of Kansas, 1994Courtesy of the University Press of KansasThe thousands of people who rode out the Dust Bowl years in southwest Kansas are the focus of Rooted in Dust. Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, professor and Chair of the Department of History at Iowa State University, examines the social impact of drought and depression, and illustrates how both town and farm families dealt with deprivation by finding odd jobs, working in government programs, or depending on federal and private assistance.

On the Dirty Plate Trail: Remembering the Dust Bowl Refugee Camps, by Sanora Babb, photographs by Dorothy Babb; edited by Douglas WixsonUniversity of Texas Press,Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center Series, 2007Courtesy of the University of Texas PressThis book is a firsthand account of the migrations, immigrant camps, and labor organizing of displaced Plains farmers during the Dust Bowl period. It is based on the notes of Sanora Babb, who helped set up some of the camps and worked with migrant farm families. The “dirty plate trail” was the old U.S. Highway 99 in the Central Valley of California, where many migrant camps were located because of the agricultural jobs available nearby.

High Plains/Ogallala aquifer, water level changes pre-development to 2011Data courtesy United States Geological Survey;Map by Jess Porter, University of Arkansas at Little RockThe High Plains aquifer system, a major portion of which is also known as theOgallala aquifer, has been the primary source of water for agriculture on the Great Plains in the decades following the Dust Bowl. As more farmers pump the underground water to the surface, however, withdrawal rates have exceeded natural replenishment rates. Thus, wells must now be drilled much deeper to reach the aquifer at many locations.

Panel 20

The Plains Today

The people of the Great Plains face new challenges not present in the 1930s. The main source of underground water used for today’s farming decreases every year. For now, farmers can draw water from the aquifer deep in the ground and soak their fields with sprinkler systems that spray water in a wide circle. This use of irrigation diminishes the opportunities for severe dust storms to develop. Dwindling water resources, however, and the high cost of extracting the water threaten to curtail irrigation in the future.

Our best bulwark against another ecological crisis on the Plains remains our collective knowledge. How do we build strong communities? How do we reimagine economic and social systems that fit with the natural environment? The history of theDust Bowl can inform these discussions.

Supercell thunderstorm, Oklahoma, June 3, 2008Sean Waugh, photographerCourtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,Severe Storms LaboratoryA towering cumulonimbus cloud is perched above a typical Great Plains landscape. Thunderstorms like this can be a blessing or a curse. Precious moisture sustains Plains’ crops, but the high winds, hail, and tornados that can be associated with these thunderstorms can destroy a planting season’s work in moments.

Church of Christ sign, Boise City, Oklahoma, June 2013Jess Porter, photographer, University of Arkansas at Little RockDivine Providence is sought in times of drought. This sign, at a church in the westernmost county of the Oklahoma Panhandle, requests assistance from passersby.

Center-pivot irrigation from the Ogallala/High Plains aquifer,Beaver County, Oklahoma, June 2013Jess Porter, photographer, University of Arkansas at Little RockIrrigated corn grows tall and contrasts sharply with the stubble of the recently harvested winter wheat. Stark contrasts in vegetation occur on the Plains as a result of irrigation from underground water. The Ogallala/High Plains aquifer has been utilized to provide a reliable source of water in the decades following the Dust Bowl. Water is being withdrawn from the aquifer at a much higher rate than it is being replenished.

Agricultural fields and abandoned farmstead, eastern Montana, date unknownTerry Sohl, photographerCourtesy of United States Geological SurveyThe Great Plains region of the United States has experienced significant land-use change since European settlement, with vast swathes of grasslands converted to agricultural lands. Access to water, technological changes, a growing biofuels industry, fluctuating demands for agricultural products, and government policies have resulted in periodic historical shifts in land use in the region.

Exhibition CreditsDust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry was developed by the American Library Association Public Programs Office in collaboration with the libraries of Oklahoma State University and Mount Holyoke College. The exhibition and tour were made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

Exhibition curators:Jess C. Porter, Assistant Professor of Geography,University of Arkansas at Little RockCharles W. Romney, Assistant Professor of History,University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Exhibition design:Chester Design Associates, Chicago

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.