Dust Bowl Timeline

After the favorable conditions of the 1920s, the region entered an unusually dry era in the summer of 1930, marking the beginning of the drought conditions that would define the Dust Bowl.

The first recorded dust storm of the Dust Bowl era occurred on September 14, 1930, an early sign of the ecological disaster to come as dried topsoil began to blow away.

On November 11, 1933, a very strong dust storm stripped topsoil from desiccated South Dakota farmlands in one of a series of severe dust storms that year.

Beginning on May 9, 1934, a strong, two-day dust storm removed massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst such storms of the Dust Bowl, carrying dust as far as the East Coast.

During the winter of 1934–35, red snow fell on New England, tinted by Great Plains dust carried thousands of miles eastward by the storms.

On April 14, 1935, known as 'Black Sunday', the day started out clear and warm with temperatures in the 80s and completely still air, causing many people to let down their guard before massive black blizzards swept across the region.

Image source: Black Sunday (storm)

The drought came in three waves: 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as long as eight years.

In the fall of 1939, after nearly a decade of dirt and dust, the drought ended when regular rainfall finally returned to the region, bringing relief to the battered Great Plains.

The entire region south to West Texas lacked any period of above-normal rainfall until record rains hit in 1941, finally ending the prolonged dry period.

During Roosevelt's first 100 days in office in 1933, his administration quickly initiated programs to conserve soil and restore the region's ecological balance as part of the New Deal response to the crisis.

Image source: New Deal

Interior Secretary Harold Ickes established the Soil Erosion Service in August 1933 under Hugh Hammond Bennett, launching federal efforts to combat erosion on the Great Plains.

Image source: Natural Resources Conservation Service

In 1935, the federal government formed a Drought Relief Service (DRS) to coordinate relief activities for drought-stricken farmers and communities.

The President's Drought Committee issued a report in 1935 covering the government's assistance to agriculture during 1934 through mid-1935, discussing conditions, measures of relief, organization, finances, operations, and results.

In 1935, the Soil Erosion Service was transferred and reorganized under the Department of Agriculture and renamed the Soil Conservation Service, expanding federal conservation work.

As part of New Deal programs, Congress passed the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act in 1936, requiring landowners to share allocated government subsidies with laborers who worked their farms. The Act shifted the parity goal toward income equality between farm and non-farm populations, recreating the purchasing power ratio that prevailed during 1909–1914.

Image source: Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936

Developed in 1937 to speed up the process and increase returns from pasture, the 'hay method' was originally supposed to occur in Kansas naturally over 25–40 years, but was accelerated to reestablish native grasses.

In 1937, the federal government began an aggressive campaign to encourage Dust Bowl farmers to adopt planting and plowing methods that conserved the soil, paying reluctant farmers a dollar an acre to use the new methods.

By 1938, the massive conservation effort had reduced the amount of blowing soil by 65%, demonstrating significant progress in stabilizing the eroded lands.

In 1941, a Kansas agricultural experiment station released a bulletin suggesting reestablishing native grasses by the 'hay method', spreading the restoration technique developed in 1937.

Geiger happened to be in Boise City, Oklahoma, to witness the Black Sunday black blizzards; Edward Stanley, the Kansas City news editor of the Associated Press, coined the term 'Dust Bowl' while rewriting Geiger's news story.

Dorothea Lange's photographs depicted the conditions of migrants during the Dust Bowl, particularly her iconic image Migrant Mother, taken in 1936, which became one of the most famous photographs of the era.

John Steinbeck's 1937 novel Of Mice and Men became one of many cultural works depicting the hardships of the Dust Bowl era and the lives of displaced workers.

Image source: Of Mice and Men

Author John Steinbeck, borrowing closely from field notes taken by Farm Security Administration worker and author Sanora Babb, wrote The Grapes of Wrath (1939) about migrant workers and farm families displaced by the Dust Bowl.

Image source: The Grapes of Wrath

Babb's own novel about the lives of the migrant workers, Whose Names Are Unknown, was written in 1939, but was eclipsed and shelved in response to Steinbeck's success, and was not published until 2004.

Image source: Whose Names Are Unknown

Many of folk singer Woody Guthrie's songs, such as those on his 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads, are about his experiences traveling with displaced farmers from Oklahoma to California, earning him the nickname the 'Dust Bowl Troubadour'.

Image source: Dust Bowl Ballads

The 2003–2005 HBO TV series Carnivàle was set during the Dust Bowl period, bringing the era to television audiences.

Image source: Carnivàle

The 2014 science fiction film Interstellar features a ravaged 21st-century America scoured by dust storms caused by a worldwide pathogen affecting all crops. Director Christopher Nolan featured interviews from the 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl to draw parallels with the 1930s crisis.

Image source: Interstellar (film)

In 2017, Americana recording artist Grant Maloy Smith released the album Dust Bowl – American Stories, inspired by the history of the Dust Bowl.