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What lessons can we take from what happened during the Dust Bowl?

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The Dust Bowl: An Unforgettable Farming Catastrophe

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In April 1936 a young photographer named Arthur Rothstein showed up in Boise City to take photographs for the federal government's Resettlement Administration.

Rothstein's boss, Roy Stryker, believed that pictures could be a powerful tool to show not only the multitude of problems the nation was facing, but what the government was doing about them.

Over the course of seven years, as the agency became part of the Farm Security Administration, Stryker would launch an unprecedented documentary effort, eventually amassing more than 200,000 images of America in the 1930s taken by a talented cadre of photographers, including Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Marion Post Walcott, John Vachon, and Dorothea Lange.
Click on the thumbnail images below to view the full photos.

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THE DUST BOWL chronicles the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, in which the frenzied wheat boom of the 'Great Plow-Up,' followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation.

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The Plow That Broke the Plains, ca. 1937

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ARC Identifier 13595 / Local Identifier 96.2. The film presents the social and economic history of the Great Plains -- from the time of the settlement of the prairies, through the World War I boom, to the years of depression and drought.

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The changing perception (view) of the Great Plains

In the decades after the Civil War, from 1865 until the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of Americans moved into the area of the West called the Great Plains.

Before the Civil War, most people going to the West passed right over the Great Plains. They considered the area a vast treeless wasteland. Their goal was to get to the far West - usually California or Oregon.

After the Civil War, the perception of the Great Plains changed. There were many new inventions, adaptations, and technological advances that made it possible to farm the land in that area. Some examples are shown in the photographs below.

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Settling the Great Plains: Inventions and Adaptations

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The changing perception (view) of the Great Plains In the decades after the Civil War, from 1865 until the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of Americans moved into the area of the West called the Great Plains. Before the Civil War, most people going to the West passed right over the Great Plains.

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Infotopia Presents: Texas Indians-The Apaches of Texas

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Lesson 04b Spaniards Come Texas_ Coronado

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Lesson 04a American Indians of the Plains