Where did farmers end up when they left the Dust Bowl?

Okie Migration

Many of them, poverty-stricken, traveled west looking for work. From 1935 to 1940, roughly 250,000 Oklahoma migrants moved to California. A third settled in the state's agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley. These Dust Bowl refugees were called “Okies.”

Where did many farmers go after the Dust Bowl?

Driven by the depression, drought, and the Dust Bowl, thousands upon thousands left their homes in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Over 300,000 of them came to California. They looked to California as a land of promise. Not since the Gold Rush had so many people traveled in such large numbers to the state.

What happened to farms during the Dust Bowl?

Without the indigenous grasses in place, the high winds that occur on the plains picked up the topsoil and created the massive dust storms that marked the Dust Bowl period. The persistent dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion.

Where did all the dust from the Dust Bowl go?

It went as far as NYC where it was 1,800 miles wide and weighed 359 million tons. It carried dust 300 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean.

What famous route did farmers travel to escape the Dust Bowl regions?

The importance of Route 66 to emigrating "Dust Bowlers" during the Depression years received wide publicity. Less is known about the importance of the highway to those who opted to eke out a living in economically devastated Kansas, Oklahoma, West Texas, and New Mexico.

History Brief: the Dust Bowl

Where did victims of the Dust Bowl primarily migrate to?

These images show the devastation that drove the Dust Bowl refugees to leave their homes and migrate to California. They also depict the lives of these families on the road west.

Which state did not welcome farmers who had left the Dust Bowl?

By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states; of those, 200,000 moved to California. When they reached the border, they did not receive a warm welcome as described in this 1935 excerpt from Collier's magazine.

Could the Dust Bowl happen again?

Such conditions could be expected to occur naturally only rarely – about once a century. But with rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, dust bowl conditions are likely to become much more frequent events.

What was the aftermath of the Dust Bowl?

The dust storms themselves destroyed houses and even entire towns -- over 500,000 Americans became homeless due to the Dust Bowl. This desperation caused the greatest migration in U.S. history. By 1939, 3.5 million people left the Great Plains, with most of them moving westward in search of work and a place to live.

Did the Dust Bowl land ever recover?

While some of the Dust Bowl land never recovered, the settled communities becoming ghost towns, many of the once-affected areas have become major food producers.

How did farmers recover from the Dust Bowl?

Some of the new methods he introduced included crop rotation, strip farming, contour plowing, terracing, planting cover crops and leaving fallow fields (land that is plowed but not planted). Because of resistance, farmers were actually paid a dollar an acre by the government to practice one of the new farming methods.

How many people left their farms during the Dust Bowl drought?

Many people decided to leave the dust storms behind and move west to start a new life. It is estimated that 2.5 million people left the region during the Dust Bowl years [5]. Even for those who wanted to stay, economic conditions forced many from their farms.

How long did the effects of the dust bowl last?

Results of a Dust Storm, Oklahoma, 1936. Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act.

What happened to the families affected by the Dust Bowl?

Because many farmers could no longer work the land, they could not pay their mortgages. The drought and dust storms left an estimated 500,000 people homeless, and an estimated 2.5 million people moved out of the Dust Bowl states. The people moved to Arizona, Washington and Oregon.

Why didn't it rain during the Dust Bowl?

More dust bowl images

These changes in sea surface temperatures created shifts in the large-scale weather patterns and low level winds that reduced the normal supply of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and inhibited rainfall throughout the Great Plains.

Does the US still have dust storms?

Dust storms and Haboobs can occur anywhere in the United States but are most common in the Southwest.

What happened to the Okies who went to California?

Predominantly upland southerners, the half-million Okies met new hardships in California, where they were unwelcome aliens, forced to live in squatter camps and to compete for scarce jobs as agricultural migrant laborers.

Where did the Okies go?

Although Oklahomans left for other states, they made the greatest impact on California and Arizona, where the term "Okie" denoted any poverty-stricken migrant from the Southwest (Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas). From 1935 to 1940 California received more than 250,000 migrants from the Southwest.

Why did Dust Bowl farmers go to California?

As families realized that the drought and dust storms would not end, some sold what they could not take and began to drive west on Route 66. Many hoped to become hired hands on California farms, learning how to grow fruits and vegetables while living on the farms where they worked.

Do migrant workers exist today?

There is an estimated 2.4 million hired farmworkers in the US, including migrant, seasonal, year-round, and guest program workers.

What were Dust Bowl refugees called?

Although the Dust Bowl included many Great Plains states, the migrants were generically known as "Okies," referring to the approximately 20 percent who were from Oklahoma.

What diseases did people get from the Dust Bowl?

The swirling dust proved deadly.

Those who inhaled the airborne prairie dust suffered coughing spasms, shortness of breath, asthma, bronchitis and influenza. Much like miners, Dust Bowl residents exhibited signs of silicosis from breathing in the extremely fine silt particulates, which had high silica content.

How did people try to survive the Dust Bowl?

People tried to protect themselves by hanging wet sheets in front of doorways and windows to filter the dirt. They stuffed window frames with gummed tape and rags.

What states were most affected by the Dust Bowl?

Although it technically refers to the western third of Kansas, southeastern Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle, the northern two-thirds of the Texas Panhandle, and northeastern New Mexico, the Dust Bowl has come to symbolize the hardships of the entire nation during the 1930s.