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The Farms That Blew Away
By 1865, when the Civil War ended, not much unused farmland was left in the eastern half of the United States. But farther west, on the Great Plains that included the Dakotas and the western parts of Kansas and Nebraska, there was plenty of free land for the taking.
Men who had visited the Great Plains reported that the land closely resembled the fertile prairies of Illinois and eastern Kansas. The dark brown soil was thickly blanketed with rich grass. Railroads were being built across the Plains, and settlers would eventually be able to ship farm products from there to eastern markets.
Many settlers migrated west to the Great Plains. They plowed up the deep-rooted wild grasses that had held down the fertile topsoil, and they planted wheat and corn.
The settlers learned, in time, that the Great Plains was not like Illinois or eastern Kansas. For one thing, there was less rainfall; and rainfall varied widely from year to year. Strong winds blew all summer long. In drought years, crops died and the loosened topsoil that was no longer anchored by the roots of the grasses blew away. In good years, when there was better-than-average rainfall, farmers prospered.
Then, in the 1930's, disaster struck. One dry year followed another. Lakes, rivers, and wells, went dry. In 1933, people in New York and other eastern cities saw ochre-colored clouds that sometimes obscured the sun. They were dust clouds, and they contained some of the fertile topsoil of the Great Plains.
The settlers who moved to the western plains had not expected to destroy the land they tried to farm. But they nearly transformed it into a desert. They gave to some parts of the Great Plains a new name—the Dust Bowl.
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