The+Dust+Bowl

media type="youtube" key="aI0_wmGD_h8" height="344" width="425" The Dust Bowl By Julia The Dust Bowl made a big impact on America today. It started in the 1930’s and didn’t end until the 1940’s. The Dust Bowl was a time when there were extreme blizzards, tornadoes, droughts and dirt storms.

When World War I started the government told farmers to grow more wheat because the Europeans were buying the wheat. This was giving America more money. Farmers started buying more and more land. The new farming technology allowed farmers to plant more and work not just in the day but also at night. Wheat was grown everywhere. This was the whole start of the dust bowl. The native grasses that held the dirt in place through drought and wind storms was now not protected anymore because when they were digging up the grass for the crops. All the grass that was holding the soil in place wasn’t there anymore. When the winds blew the dirt went everywhere. In the dust bowl 5 farming land states were affected. Those states were southern Colorado, northeastern New Mexico, western Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma. The dust bowl spread 400 miles north to south and 300 miles east to west.
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If you were a farmer you were pretty wealthy until things started going wrong. Farmers were very wealthy at the beginning of World War I. They would sell wheat like no other product. But then in the 1930’s the farming started to fall apart. By 1931 most farmers gave up and abandon their farms.
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This tragic problem didn’t just affect farmers but also regular people on the other side of the country. These people wanted wheat and since there was no wheat growing on the farmer’s land the people couldn’t have wheat. Strangely, not only humans but fish were affected by the dust bowl. When the dirt was blowing everywhere it was going into the water. The fish’s fins were getting dirt in their fins and a lot of them died.
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In January 1933, the land was still in bad condition and as if it couldn’t have gotten any worse there was another big dirt storm that killed a lot of wheat. In February, the temperature dropped 74 degrees and it was below freezing for days. Later in May the weather didn’t change and a dirt tornado hit the wheat. In 1934, there were still many dirt storms. This weather was so out of control that in 1935 this horrible weather made the national headlines. April 14, 1935 was the best day in the lifetime for farmers. The sun came out for the first time in a very long time. This was known as “Black Sunday”. But the bad weather didn’t end. In 1938 there was a bad case of a dirt storm and snow storm combined.
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After this information you can see how the dust bowl really did affected Americans. This really was a long period in time, the dust bowl really shows how there were very hard years during the years of the 20th century.

**__ Bibliography __**

Adler, David, a Picture Book of Abraham Lincoln, United States of America, 1989

Harness, Cheryl, Young Abe Lincoln, Washington, National Geographic Society, 2002

Usel, T.M, Abraham Lincoln, United States of America, Capstone Press, 1996

Isaacs, Sally, America In the Time of Abraham Lincoln, Chicago, Illinois, Heinemann Library, 2000 http://elementary.nettrekker.com/results/?keyword=the%20dust%20bowl&ctgry_i