Dust Bowl: Oklahoma Historical Perspective

For a Historical Perspective on the Dust Bowl by Gary McManus, Oklahoma Climatological Survey written in 2004:

http://climate.ok.gov/summaries/seasonal/Oklahoma_Climate_Summer_2004.pdf

HERE IS A SAMPLE OF THAT PROJECT IN 2004 by Gary McManus, Oklahoma Climatological Survey:

 

 

“I saw when he opened the sixth seal…and the sun became

 

black as sackcloth.” – Revelations 6:12.

 

Deep in the throes of The Great Depression, the nation paid

 

little attention to reports of massive clouds of dust enveloping

 

the High Plains. Ironically, the Dust Bowl farmers had not

 

been greatly affected by the early days of the depression. The

 

Oklahoma Panhandle was a place of economic boom in the

 

beginning of the 1930s, and had been named the country’s

 

most prosperous region. Already tempered to a tough mettle

 

by life on the great American prairie, the farmers of the High

 

Plains learned how to survive bouts of drought and economic

 

hardship by living off the land. The Dust Bowl would soon

 

take that away, however, bringing the harsh realities of the

 

depression to those that thought themselves immune. In time,

 

the country would come to realize that the two events were

 

connected at their very core, each adding strength to the

 

severity of the other. By the time the rains returned in 1940,

 

along with the economic recovery associated with WW II, the

 

High Plains had lost one-quarter of its farmers, and America

 

had experienced the greatest mass-migration of people in its

 

history. Much of the credit for that great exodus to the west

 

would be given to the Dust Bowl.

 

 

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