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Andy Millette

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The Modern American Poetry Site is a comprehensive learning environment and scholarly forum for the study of modern and contemporary American poetry. MAPS welcomes submissions of original essays and teaching materials related to MAPS poets and the Anthology of Modern American Poetry. We are also happy to take questions and suggestions for future materials.

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Andy Millette

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Andy Millette

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Chloe Arthurs

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Chloe Arthurs

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Riley White

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How the Dust Bowl made a role in The Great Depression

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How the Dust Bowl made a role in The Great Depression

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Drew Caron

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Do you want to own your own business? If so, check out the free resources, templates, and online classes for small business owners at 5-Minute Classes (an example class is shown below).

Note: Overtilling the soil caused the Dust Bowl. Today, many farmers use no till farming, no till planting, and no till seeding to increase their crop yields and protect the fertility of the soil.

For years, American farmers overplanted and poorly managed their crop rotations, and between 1930 and 1936, when severe drought conditions prevailed across much of America's Plains, Dust Bowls were created. Soil turned to dust and large dark clouds could be seen across the horizon in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and New Mexico. Topsoil was carried by the ton from barren fields, across hundreds of miles of Plains in the driest regions of the country.

Click here to read facts about the Dust Bowl, migration during the Dust Bowl, hobos, and FDR New Deal programs that were designed to address the Dust Bowl conditions.

Black Sunday, April 14, 1935, a day when winds reached top speeds of 60 miles per hour, prompted an AP reporter to coin the term "dust bowl" for the first time.

The agricultural depression was a major factor in the Great Depression, as bank loans went bad, credit dried up, and banks closed across the country.

Throughout the 1930s, more than a million acres of land were affected in the Dust Bowl, thousands of farmers lost their livelihoods and property, and mass migration patterns began to emerge as farmers left rural America in search of work in urban areas. This migration added to Great Depression unemployment woes, stressed relief and benefits programs, and created social strife in many large American cities.

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Dust Bowl | Causes of the Great Depression | Dust Bowl, Facts

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Do you want to own your own business? If so, check out the free resources, templates, and online classes for small business owners at 5-Minute Classes (an example class is shown below). Note: Overtilling the soil caused the Dust Bowl.

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Adealia Larrabee

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Joshua Cole

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Highway Chronicle Chapter X: Legislators Lay the Foundation for State and Federal Highways

In 1912, the Ohio Legislature gave the state highway department authority to establish and oversee an Inter-County Highway System. The inclusion of more than 9,000 miles of major roadway lead to further legislation in 1921 that enabled the state to actively plan, design, build and maintain highways from newly created district offices.

At the federal level, the first road aid act was passed by Congress in 1916 and provided $75 million in matching funds to state highway agencies "to get American drivers out of the mud."

Later, the Federal Highway Act of 1921 established the Bureau of Public Roads and supplied another $75 million in matching funds to help develop the Lincoln Highway, which became the first paved two-lane intercontinental automobile route between New York and San Francisco. The Ohio portion followed U.S. Route 30 from East Liverpool westward through Van Wert to the Indiana line.

During the Great Depression, the Federal Works Progress Administration, Public Works Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps put thousands of unemployed Ohioans back to work building roads, bridges, drainage, and landscape infrastructure. The average annual application of hot mix asphalt on the state's thoroughfares rose more than 1,000 percent from 19,400 tons in 1929 to 210,000 tons by 1940.

Amidst this great period of construction, the Ohio Legislature officially re-designated the position of "County Surveyor" to that of "County Engineer," in 1935, to provide for the building and maintenance of county roads and bridges.

Post-War Road Construction Boom Shapes the Way We Travel

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Chapter X: Legislators Lay the Foundation for State and Federal Highways

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In 1912, the Ohio Legislature gave the state highway department authority to establish and oversee an Inter-County Highway System. The inclusion of more than 9,000 miles of major roadway lead to further legislation in 1921 that enabled the state to actively plan, design, build and maintain highways from newly created district offices.

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Drew Caron

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During the 1930s there was a period of severe drought and dust storms. The ecology and agriculture in the Canadian prairies and the United States was damaged severely. This period became known as the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was caused because of wind erosion that occurred because of the drought.

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Drew Caron

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Joshua Cole

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Adealia Larrabee

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The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1939 and was the worst economic depression in the history of the United States. Economists and historians point to the stock market crash of October 24, 1929, as the start of the downturn. But the truth is that many things caused the Great Depression, not just one single event.

In the United States, the Great Depression crippled the presidency of Herbert Hoover and led to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Promising the nation a New Deal, Roosevelt would become the nation's longest-serving president. The economic downturn wasn't just confined to the United States; it affected much of the developed world. One cause of the depression in Europe, was that the Nazis came to power in Germany, sowing the seeds of World War II.

Stock Market Crash of 1929

Remembered today as "Black Tuesday," the stock market crash of October 29, 1929 was neither the sole cause of the Great Depression nor the first crash that month, but it's typically remembered as the most obvious marker of the Depression beginning. The market, which had reached record highs that very summer, had begun to decline in September.

On Thursday, October 24, the market plunged at the opening bell, causing a panic. Though investors managed to halt the slide, just five days later on "Black Tuesday" the market crashed, losing 12% of its value and wiping out $14 billion of investments. By two months later, stockholders had lost more than $40 billion dollars. Even though the stock market regained some of its losses by the end of 1930, the economy was devastated. America truly entered what is called the Great Depression.

Bank Failures

The effects of the stock market crash rippled throughout the economy. Nearly 700 banks failed in waning months of 1929 and more than 3,000 collapsed in 1930. Federal deposit insurance was as-yet unheard of, so when the banks failed, people lost all their money. Some people panicked, causing bank runs as people desperately withdrew their money, which in turned forced more banks to close. By the end of the decade, more than 9,000 banks had failed. Surviving institutions, unsure of the economic situation and concerned for their own survival, became unwilling to lend money. This exacerbated the situation, leading to less and less spending.

Reduction in Purchasing Across the Board

With people's investments worthless, their savings diminished or depleted, and credit tight to nonexistent, spending by consumers and companies alike ground to a standstill. As a result, workers were laid off en masse. In a chain reaction, as people lost their jobs, they were unable to keep up with paying for items they had bought through installment plans; repossessions and evictions were commonplace. More and more unsold inventory began to accumulate. The unemployment rate rose above 25%, which meant even less spending to help alleviate the economic situation.

American Economic Policy With Europe

As the Great Depression tightened its grip on the nation, the government was forced to act. Vowing to protect U.S. industry from overseas competitors, Congress passed the Tariff Act of 1930, better known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. The measure imposed near-record tax rates on a wide range of imported goods. A number of American trading partners retaliated by imposing tariffs on U.S.-made goods. As a result, world trade fell by two-thirds between 1929 and 1934. By then, Franklin Roosevelt and a Democrat-controlled Congress passed new legislation allowing the president to negotiate significantly lower tariff rates with other nations.

Drought Conditions

The economic devastation of the Great Depression was made worse by environmental destruction. A years-long drought coupled with farming practices which did not use soil-preservation techniques created a vast region from southeast Colorado to the Texas panhandle that came to be called the Dust Bowl. Massive dust storms choked towns, killing crops and livestock, sickening people and causing untold millions in damage. Thousands fled the region as the economy collapsed, something John Steinbeck chronicled in his masterpiece "The Grapes of Wrath." It would be years, if not decades, before the region's environment recovered.

The Legacy of the Great Depression

There were other causes of the Great Depression, but these five factors are considered by more history and economics scholars as the most significant. They led to major governmental reforms and new federal programs; some, like Social Security, federal support of conservation tillage and sustainable agriculture, and federal deposit insurance, are still with us today. And although the U.S. has experienced significant economic downturns since, nothing has matched the severity or duration of the Great Depression.

Sources and Further Reading

Eichengreen, Barry. "Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses of History." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Turkel, Studs. "Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression." New York: The New Press, 1986.

Watkins, Tom H. "The Great Depression: America in the 1930s." New York: Little, Brown, 1993.

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The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1939 and was the worst economic depression in the history of the United States. Economists and historians point to the stock market crash of October 24, 1929, as the start of the downturn. But the truth is that many things caused the Great Depression, not just one single event.

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Cody Crocker

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Drew Caron

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A farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936. Iconic photo entitled "Dust Bowl Cimarron County, Oklahoma" taken by Arthur Rothstein.

Map of states and counties affected by the Dust Bowl between 1935 and 1938 originally prepared by the Soil Conservation Service. The most severely affected counties during this period are colored  .

The Dust Bowl was the result of a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors (severe drought) and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion, most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region. 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.

The Dust Bowl has been the subject of many cultural works, including John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, the folk music of Woody Guthrie, and Dorothea Lange's photographs depicting the conditions of migrants, particularly Migrant Mother, taken in 1936.

Geographic characteristics and early history

With insufficient understanding of the ecology of the plains, farmers had conducted extensive deep plowing of the Great Plains' virgin topsoil during the previous decade; this displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. The rapid mechanization of farm equipment, especially small gasoline tractors, and widespread use of the combine harvester contributed to farmers' decisions to convert arid grassland (much of which received no more than 10 inches (250 mm) of precipitation per year) to cultivated cropland. During the drought of the 1930s, the unanchored soil turned to dust, which prevailing winds blew away in huge clouds that sometimes blackened the sky. These choking billows of dust - named "black blizzards" or "black rollers" - traveled cross-country, reaching as far as the East Coast and striking such cities as New York City and Washington, D.C. On the plains, they often reduced visibility to three feet (1 m) or less. Associated Press reporter Robert E. Geiger happened to be in Boise City, Oklahoma, to witness the " Black Sunday" black blizzards of April 14, 1935; Edward Stanley, the Kansas City news editor of the Associated Press, coined the term "Dust Bowl" while rewriting Geiger's news story.

The term "the Dust Bowl" originally referred to the geographical area affected by the dust, but today it usually refers to the event itself (the term "Dirty Thirties" is also sometimes used). The drought and erosion of the Dust Bowl affected 100 million acres (400,000 km ²) that centered on the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma Panhandle and touched adjacent sections of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. The Dust Bowl forced tens of thousands of poverty-stricken families, who were unable to pay mortgages or grow crops, to abandon their farms, and losses reached $25 million per day by 1936 (equivalent to $530 million in 2022). Many of these families, often called " Okies" because many of them came from Oklahoma, migrated to California and other states to find that the Great Depression had rendered economic conditions there little better than those they had left.

A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas, in 1935.

The Dust Bowl area lies principally west of the 100th meridian on the High Plains, characterized by plains that vary from rolling in the north to flat in the Llano Estacado. Elevation ranges from 2,500 ft (760 m) in the east to 6,000 ft (1,800 m) at the base of the Rocky Mountains. The area is semiarid, receiving less than 20 in (510 mm) of rain annually; this rainfall supports the shortgrass prairie biome originally present in the area. The region is also prone to extended drought, alternating with unusual wetness of equivalent duration. During wet years, the rich soil provides bountiful agricultural output, but crops fail during dry years. The region is also subject to high winds. During early European and American exploration of the Great Plains, this region was thought unsuitable for European-style agriculture; explorers called it the Great American Desert. The lack of surface water and timber made the region less attractive than other areas for pioneer settlement and agriculture.

The federal government encouraged settlement and development of the Plains for agriculture via the Homestead Act of 1862, offering settlers " quarter section" 160-acre (65 ha) plots. With the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the completion of the First transcontinental railroad in 1869, waves of new migrants and immigrants reached the Great Plains and greatly increased the acreage under cultivation. An unusually wet period in the Great Plains mistakenly led settlers and the federal government to believe that " rain follows the plow" (a popular phrase among real estate promoters) and that the region's climate had permanently changed. While initial agricultural endeavors were primarily cattle ranching, the harsh winters' adverse effect on the cattle, beginning in 1886, a short drought in 1890, and general overgrazing, led many landowners to increase the amount of land under cultivation.

Recognizing the challenge of cultivating marginal arid land, the U.S. government expanded on the 160 acres (65 ha) offered under the Homestead Act, granting 640 acres (260 ha) to homesteaders in western Nebraska under the Kinkaid Act (1904) and 320 acres (130 ha) elsewhere in the Great Plains under the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909. Waves of European settlers arrived in the plains at the beginning of the 20th century. A return of unusually wet weather seemingly confirmed a previously held opinion that the "formerly" semiarid area could support large-scale agriculture. At the same time, technological improvements such as mechanized plowing and mechanized harvesting made it possible to operate larger properties without increasing labor costs.

The combined effects of World War I and the disruption of the Russian Revolution, which decreased the supply of wheat and other commodity crops, increased agricultural prices; this demand encouraged farmers to dramatically increase cultivation. For example, in the Llano Estacado of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas, the area of farmland doubled between 1900 and 1920, then tripled between 1925 and 1930. The agricultural methods farmers favored during this period created the conditions for large-scale erosion under certain environmental conditions. The widespread conversion of the land by deep plowing and other soil preparation methods to enable agriculture eliminated the native grasses that held the soil in place and helped retain moisture during dry periods. Furthermore, cotton farmers left fields bare during the winter, when winds in the High Plains are highest, and burned the stubble as a means to control weeds before planting, thereby depriving the soil of organic nutrients and surface vegetation.

Drought and dust storms

A dust storm; Spearman, Texas, April 14, 1935

Heavy black clouds of dust rising over the Texas Panhandle, Texas, c. 1936

After fairly favorable climatic conditions in the 1920s with good rainfall and relatively moderate winters, which permitted increased settlement and cultivation in the Great Plains, the region entered an unusually dry era in the summer of 1930. During the next decade, the northern plains suffered four of their seven driest calendar years since 1895, Kansas four of its 12 driest, and the entire region south to West Texas lacked any period of above-normal rainfall until record rains hit in 1941. When severe drought struck the Great Plains region in the 1930s, it resulted in erosion and loss of topsoil because of farming practices at the time. The drought dried the topsoil and over time it became friable, reduced to a powdery consistency in some places. Without indigenous grasses in place, the plains' high winds picked up the topsoil and created massive dust storms. The persistent dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion. The Great Plains' fine soil eroded easily and was carried east by strong continental winds.

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. The dust clouds blew all the way to Chicago, where they deposited 12 million pounds (5,400 tonnes) of dust. Two days later, the same storm reached cities to the east, such as Cleveland, Buffalo, Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C. That winter (1934-35), red snow fell on New England.

On April 14, 1935, known as " Black Sunday", 20 of the worst "black blizzards" occurred across the entire sweep of the Great Plains, from Canada south to Texas. The storms caused extensive damage and appeared to turn day to night; witnesses reported that they could not see five feet (1.5 m) in front of them at certain points. Denver-based Associated Press reporter Robert E. Geiger happened to be in Boise City, Oklahoma, that day. His story about Black Sunday marked the first appearance of the term Dust Bowl; it was coined by Edward Stanley, Kansas City news editor of the Associated Press, while rewriting Geiger's news story.

Spearman and Hansford County have been literaly [sic] in a cloud of dust for the past week. Ever since Friday of last week, there hasn't been a day pass but what the county was beseieged [sic] with a blast of wind and dirt. On rare occasions when the wind did subside for a period of hours, the air has been so filled with dust that the town appeared to be overhung by a fog cloud. Because of this long seige of dust and every building being filled with it, the air has become stifling to breathe and many people have developed sore throats and dust colds as a result.

Much of the farmland was eroded in the aftermath of the Dust Bowl. In 1941, a Kansas agricultural experiment station released a bulletin that suggested reestablishing native grasses by the "hay method". 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.

After much data analysis, the causal mechanism for the droughts can be linked to ocean temperature anomalies. Specifically, Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperatures appear to have had an indirect effect on the general atmospheric circulation, while Pacific sea surface temperatures seem to have had the most direct influence.

Human displacement

Buried machinery in a barn lot; Dallas, South Dakota, May 1936

This catastrophe intensified the economic impact of the Great Depression in the region.

In 1935, many families were forced to leave their farms and travel to other areas seeking work because of the drought, which had already lasted four years. The abandonment of homesteads and financial ruin resulting from catastrophic topsoil loss led to widespread hunger and poverty. Dust Bowl conditions fomented an exodus of the displaced from the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma Panhandle, and the surrounding Great Plains to adjacent regions. More than 500,000 Americans were left homeless. More than 350 houses had to be torn down after one storm alone. The severe drought and dust storms left many homeless; others had their mortgages foreclosed by banks, or felt they had no choice but to abandon their farms in search of work. Many Americans migrated west, looking for work. Parents packed up " jalopies" with their families and a few personal belongings and headed west. Some residents of the Plains, especially Kansas and Oklahoma, fell ill and died of dust pneumonia or malnutrition.

"Broke, baby sick, and car trouble!" - Dorothea Lange's 1937 photo of a Missouri migrant family's jalopy stuck near Tracy, California.[33]

Between 1930 and 1940, about 3.5 million people moved out of the Plains states. In just over a year, over 86,000 people migrated to California. This number is more than the number of migrants to that area during the 1849 gold rush. Migrants abandoned farms in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, but were often generally called " Okies", "Arkies", or "Texies". Terms such as "Okies" and "Arkies" came to be standard in the 1930s for those who had lost everything and were struggling the most during the Great Depression.

A migratory family from Texas living in a trailer in an Arizona cotton field

But not all migrants traveled long distances; most participated in internal state migration, moving from counties that the Dust Bowl badly impacted to other, less affected counties. So many families left their farms and were on the move that the proportion of migrants and residents was nearly equal in the Great Plains states.

An examination of Census Bureau statistics and other records, and a 1939 survey of occupation by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of about 116,000 families who arrived in California in the 1930s, showed that only 43% of Southwesterners were doing farm work immediately before they migrated. Nearly a third of all migrants were professional or white-collar workers. Some farmers had to take on unskilled labor when they moved; leaving the farming sector commonly led to greater social mobility as there was a far greater likelihood that migrant farmers would later go into semi-skilled or high-skilled fields that paid better. Non-farmers experienced more downward occupational moves than farmers, but in most cases they were not significant enough to bring them into poverty, because high-skilled migrants were most likely to experience a downward shift into semi-skilled work. While semi-skilled work did not pay as well as high-skilled work, most of these workers were not impoverished. For the most part, by the end of the Dust Bowl the migrants generally were better off than those who chose to stay behind.

After the Great Depression ended, some migrants moved back to their original states. Many others remained where they had resettled. About one-eighth of California's population is of Okie heritage.

Government response

Resettlement Administration poster by Richard H. Jansen, 1935

Government's greatly expanded participation in land management and soil conservation was an important result of the disaster. Different groups took many different approaches to responding to the disaster. To identify areas that needed attention, groups such as the Soil Conservation Service generated detailed soil maps and took photos of the land from the sky. To create shelterbelts to reduce soil erosion, groups such as the United States Forest Service's Prairie States Forestry Project planted trees on private lands. Groups like the Resettlement Administration, which later became the Farm Security Administration, encouraged small farm owners to resettle on other lands if they lived in drier parts of the Plains.

During President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first 100 days in office in 1933, his administration quickly initiated programs to conserve soil and restore the nation's ecological balance. Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes established the Soil Erosion Service in August 1933 under Hugh Hammond Bennett. In 1935, it was transferred and reorganized under the Department of Agriculture and renamed the Soil Conservation Service. It is now known as the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

As part of New Deal programs, Congress passed the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act in 1936, requiring landowners to share the allocated government subsidies with the laborers who worked on their farms. Under the law, "benefit payments were continued as measures for production control and income support, but they were now financed by direct Congressional appropriations and justified as soil conservation measures. The Act shifted the parity goal from price equality of agricultural commodities and the articles that farmers buy to income equality of farm and non-farm population." Thus, the parity goal was to re-create the ratio between the purchasing power of the net income per person on farms from agriculture and that of the income of persons not on farms that prevailed during 1909-1914.

To stabilize prices, the government paid farmers and ordered more than six million pigs to be slaughtered as part of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). It paid to have the meat packed and distributed to the poor and hungry. The Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC) was established to regulate crop and other surpluses. In a May 14, 1935, address to the AAA, Roosevelt said:

Let me make one other point clear for the benefit of the millions in cities who have to buy meats. Last year the Nation suffered a drought of unparalleled intensity. If there had been no Government program, if the old order had obtained in 1933 and 1934, that drought on the cattle ranges of America and in the corn belt would have resulted in the marketing of thin cattle, immature hogs and the death of these animals on the range and on the farm, and if the old order had been in effect those years, we would have had a vastly greater shortage than we face today. Our program - we can prove it - saved the lives of millions of head of livestock. They are still on the range, and other millions of heads are today canned and ready for this country to eat.

The FSRC diverted agricultural commodities to relief organizations. Apples, beans, canned beef, flour and pork products were distributed through local relief channels. Cotton goods were later included, to clothe needy.

In 1935, the federal government formed a Drought Relief Service (DRS) to coordinate relief activities. The DRS bought cattle in counties that were designated emergency areas for $14 to $20 a head. Animals determined unfit for human consumption were killed; at the beginning of the program, more than 50% were so designated in emergency areas. The DRS assigned the remaining cattle to the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC) to be used in food distribution to families nationwide. Although it was difficult for farmers to give up their herds, the cattle slaughter program helped many of them avoid bankruptcy. "The government cattle buying program was a blessing to many farmers, as they could not afford to keep their cattle, and the government paid a better price than they could obtain in local markets."

Roosevelt ordered the Civilian Conservation Corps to plant the Great Plains Shelterbelt, a huge belt of more than 200 million trees from Canada to Abilene, Texas, to break the wind, hold water in the soil, and hold the soil in place. The administration also began to educate farmers on soil conservation and anti-erosion techniques, including crop rotation, strip farming, contour plowing, and terracing. In 1937, the federal government began an aggressive campaign to encourage Dust Bowl farmers to adopt planting and plowing methods that conserved the soil. The government paid reluctant farmers a dollar an acre (equivalent to $20 in 2022) to use the new methods. By 1938, the massive conservation effort had reduced the amount of blowing soil by 65%. The land still failed to yield a decent living. In the fall of 1939, after nearly a decade of dirt and dust, the drought ended when regular rainfall finally returned to the region. The government still encouraged continuing the use of conservation methods to protect the Plains' soil and ecology.

At the end of the drought, the programs implemented during the tough times helped sustain a friendly relationship between farmers and the federal government.

The President's Drought Committee issued a report in 1935 covering the government's assistance to agriculture during 1934 through mid-1935: it discussed conditions, measures of relief, organization, finances, operations, and results of the government's assistance. Numerous exhibits are included in this report.

Long-term economic impact

In many regions, more than 75% of the topsoil was blown away by the end of the 1930s. Land degradation varied widely. Aside from the short-term economic consequences of erosion, the Dust Bowl had severe long-term economic consequences.

By 1940, counties that had experienced the most erosion had a greater decline in agricultural land values. The per-acre value of farmland declined by 28% in high-erosion counties and 17% in medium-erosion counties, relative to land value changes in low-erosion counties. Even over the long term, the land's agricultural value often failed to return to pre-Dust Bowl levels. In highly eroded areas, less than 25% of the original agricultural losses were recovered. The economy adjusted predominantly through large relative population declines in more-eroded counties, both during the 1930s and through the 1950s.

The economic effects persisted in part because of farmers' failure to switch to more appropriate crops for highly eroded areas. Because the amount of topsoil had been reduced, it would have been more productive to shift from crops and wheat to animals and hay. During the Depression and through at least the 1950s, there was limited relative adjustment of farmland away from activities that became less productive in more-eroded counties.

Some of the failure to shift to more productive agricultural products may be related to ignorance about the benefits of changing land use. A second explanation is a lack of availability of credit, caused by the high rate of failure of banks in the Plains states. Because banks failed in the Dust Bowl region at a higher rate than elsewhere, farmers could not get the credit they needed to obtain capital to shift crop production. In addition, profit margins in either animals or hay were still minimal, and farmers at first had little incentive to change their crops.

Patrick Allitt recounts how fellow historian Donald Worster responded to his return visit to the Dust Bowl in the mid-1970s when he revisited some of the worst afflicted counties:

Capital-intensive agribusiness had transformed the scene; deep wells into the aquifer, intensive irrigation, the use of artificial pesticides and fertilizers, and giant harvesters were creating immense crops year after year whether it rained or not. According to the farmers he interviewed, technology had provided the perfect answer to old troubles, such of the bad days would not return. In Worster's view, by contrast, the scene demonstrated that America's capitalist high-tech farmers had learned nothing. They were continuing to work in an unsustainable way, devoting far cheaper subsidized energy to growing food than the energy could give back to its ultimate consumers.

In contrast with Worster's pessimism, historian Mathew Bonnifield argued that the Dust Bowl's long-term significance was "the triumph of the human spirit in its capacity to endure and overcome hardships and reverses."

A 2023 study in the Journal of Economic History found that while the Dust Bowl had large and enduring impacts on agricultural land, it had modest impacts on average wage incomes.

Influence on the arts and culture

Florence Owens Thompson seen in the photo Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange

"Dust bowl farmers of west Texas in town", photograph take by Dorothea Lange, June 1937, in Anton, Texas.

The crisis was documented by photographers, musicians, and authors, many hired during the Great Depression by the federal government. For instance, the Farm Security Administration hired photographers to document the crisis. Artists such as Dorothea Lange were aided by having salaried work during the Depression. She captured what have become classic images of the dust storms and migrant families. Among her best-known photographs is Destitute Pea Pickers in California. Mother of Seven Children depicted a gaunt-looking woman, Florence Owens Thompson, holding three of her children. This picture expressed the struggles of people caught by the Dust Bowl and raised awareness in other parts of the country of its reach and human cost. Decades later, Thompson disliked the boundless circulation of the photo and resented that she had received no money from its broadcast. Thompson felt it made her perceived as a Dust Bowl "Okie".

The work of independent artists was also influenced by the crises of the Dust Bowl and the Depression. 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. 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 till 2004. Many of folk singer Woody Guthrie's songs, such as those on his 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads, are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, when he traveled with displaced farmers from Oklahoma to California and learned their traditional folk and blues songs, earning him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour".

Migrants also influenced musical culture wherever they went. Oklahoma migrants, in particular, were rural Southwesterners who carried their traditional country music to California. Today, the " Bakersfield Sound" describes this blend, which developed after the migrants brought country music to the city. Their new music inspired a proliferation of country dance halls as far south as Los Angeles.

The 2003-2005 HBO TV series was set during the dust bowl.

The 2014 science fiction film Interstellar features a ravaged 21st-century America that is again scoured by dust storms (caused by a worldwide pathogen affecting all crops). Along with inspiration from the 1930s crisis, director Christopher Nolan features interviews from the 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl to draw further parallels.

In 2017, Americana recording artist Grant Maloy Smith released the album Dust Bowl - American Stories, inspired by the history of the Dust Bowl. In a review, the music magazine No Depression wrote that the album's lyrics and music are "as potent as Woody Guthrie, as intense as John Trudell and dusted with the trials and tribulations of Tom Joad - Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath."

Changes in agriculture and population on the Plains

Agricultural land and revenue boomed during World War I, but fell during the Great Depression and the 1930s.[verification needed ] The agricultural land most affected by the Dust Bowl was 16 million acres (6.5 million hectares) of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. These 20 counties that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Soil Conservation Service identified as the worst wind-eroded region were home to the majority of the Great Plains migrants during the Dust Bowl.

While migration from and between the Southern Great Plain States was greater than migration in other regions in the 1930s, the numbers of migrants from these areas had only slightly increased from the 1920s. The Dust Bowl and Great Depression thus did not trigger a mass exodus of southern migrants, but simply encouraged these migrants to keep moving where in other areas the Great Depression limited mobility due to economic issues, decreasing migration. While the population of the Great Plains did fall during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, the drop was not caused by extreme numbers of migrants leaving the Great Plains but by of a lack of migrants moving from outside the Great Plains into the region.

References

Bibliography

Bonnifield, Mathew Paul. (1979) Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt and Depression

Cunfer, Geoff. (2008) "Scaling the Dust Bowl" Archived February 26, 2021, at the Wayback Machine, Placing history: How maps, spatial data, and GIS are changing historical scholarship, ESRI Press, Redlands.

Gregory, James Noble. American exodus: The dust bowl migration and Okie culture in California (Oxford University Press, 1989)

Sylvester, Kenneth M., and Eric S. A. Rupley, "Revising the Dust Bowl: High above the Kansas Grassland", Environmental History, 17 (July 2012), 603-33.

Woody Guthrie, (1963) The (Nearly) Complete Collection of Woody Guthrie Folk Songs, Ludlow Music, New York.

Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, (1967) Hard-Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People, Oak Publications, New York.

Katelan Janke, (1935) Survival in the Storm: The Dust Bowl Diary of Grace Edwards, Dalhart, Texas, Scholastic (September 2002). ISBN 0-439-21599-4.

Sweeney, Kevin Z. (2016). Prelude to the Dust Bowl: Drought in the Nineteenth-Century Southern Plains Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Documentary films

External links

The Dust Bowl photo collection

"The Dust Bowl", a PBS television series by filmmaker Ken Burns

The Dust Bowl (EH.Net Encyclopedia)

Black Sunday, April 14, 1935, Dodge City, KS

Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941 Library of Congress, American Folklife Center Online collection of archival sound recordings, photographs, and manuscripts

The Dust Bowl (Wessels Living History Farm)

Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Dust Bowl

Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry: Oklahoma Women in the Dust Bowl Oral History Project, Oklahoma Oral History Research Program

Voices of Oklahoma interview with Frosty Troy. First person interview conducted on November 30, 2011 with Frosty Troy talking about the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Original audio and transcript archived with Voices of Oklahoma oral history project.

Dust Bowl - Ken Burns playlist on YouTube

Dust Bowl - Ken Burns playlist on YouTube

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The Dust Bowl was the result of a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors (severe drought) and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion, most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region.

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Shantytowns of the Depression (More Info)

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Shantytowns of the Depression (More Info)

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Riley White

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During the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted approximately a decade, shantytowns appeared across the U.S. as unemployed people were evicted from their homes. As the Depression worsened in the 1930s, causing severe hardships for millions of Americans, many looked to the federal government for assistance. When the government failed to provide relief, President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was blamed for the intolerable economic and social conditions, and the shantytowns that cropped up across the nation, primarily on the outskirts of major cities, became known as Hoovervilles. The highly unpopular Hoover, a Republican, was defeated in the 1932 presidential election by Democrat Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945), whose New Deal recovery programs eventually helped lift the U.S. out of the Depression. In the early 1940s, most remaining Hoovervilles were torn down.

The Great Depression Sets In

The Great Depression was the most severe and enduring economic collapse of the 20th century, and included abrupt declines in the supply and demand of goods and services along with a meteoric rise in unemployment. 1933 is generally regarded as the worst year of the Depression: One-quarter of America's workers-more than 15 million people-was out of work.

Did you know? As America's housing and economic crisis worsened through 2009, homelessness was on the rise. Encampments and shantytowns often referred to as tent cities--with similarities to Hoovervilles--began appearing in parts of California, Arizona, Tennessee, Florida, Washington and other states.

Multiple factors led to the Great Depression, including the U.S. stock market crash in October 1929 and the widespread failure of the American banking system, both of which helped destroy society's confidence in the nation's economy. Additionally, although the 1920s, also known as the Roaring Twenties, had been a decade of prosperity, income levels varied widely and numerous Americans lived beyond their means. Credit was extended to many so that they could enjoy the new inventions of the day, such as washing machines, refrigerators and automobiles.

As the optimism of the 1920s gave way to fear and desperation, Americans looked to the federal government for relief. However, the country's 31st president, Herbert Hoover, who took office in March 1929, believed that self-reliance and self-help, not government intervention, were the best means to meet citizens' needs. In his estimation, prosperity would return if people would simply help one another. And although private philanthropy increased during the early 1930s, the amounts given were not enough to make a significant impact. Many Americans in need believed the resolution to their problems lay in government assistance, but Hoover resisted such a response throughout his presidency.

The Rise of Hoovervilles

As the Depression worsened and millions of urban and rural families lost their jobs and depleted their savings, they also lost their homes. Desperate for shelter, homeless citizens built shantytowns in and around cities across the nation. These camps came to be called Hoovervilles, after the president. Democratic National Committee publicity director and longtime newspaper reporter Charles Michelson (1868-1948) is credited with coining the term, which first appeared in print in 1930.

Hooverville shanties were constructed of cardboard, tar paper, glass, lumber, tin and whatever other materials people could salvage. Unemployed masons used cast-off stone and bricks and in some cases built structures that stood 20 feet high. Most shanties, however, were distinctly less glamorous: Cardboard-box homes did not last long, and most dwellings were in a constant state of being rebuilt. Some homes were not buildings at all, but deep holes dug in the ground with makeshift roofs laid over them to keep out inclement weather. Some of the homeless found shelter inside empty conduits and water mains.

Life in a Hooverville

No two Hoovervilles were quite alike, and the camps varied in population and size. Some were as small as a few hundred people while others, in bigger metropolitan areas such as Washington, D.C., and New York City, boasted thousands of inhabitants. St. Louis, Missouri, was home to one of the country's largest and longest-standing Hoovervilles.

Whenever possible, Hoovervilles were built near rivers for the convenience of a water source. For example, in New York City, encampments sprang up along the Hudson and East rivers. Some Hoovervilles were dotted with vegetable gardens, and some individual shacks contained furniture a family had managed to carry away upon eviction from their former home. However, Hoovervilles were typically grim and unsanitary. They posed health risks to their inhabitants as well as to those living nearby, but there was little that local governments or health agencies could do. Hooverville residents had nowhere else to go, and public sympathy, for the most part, was with them. Even when Hoovervilles were raided by order of parks departments or other authorities, the men who carried out the raids often expressed regret and guilt for their actions. More often than not, Hoovervilles were tolerated.

Most Hoovervilles operated in an informal, unorganized way, but the bigger ones would sometimes put forward spokespersons to serve as a liaison between the camp and the larger community. St. Louis' Hooverville, built in 1930, had its own unofficial mayor, churches and social institutions. This Hooverville thrived because it was funded by private donations. It maintained itself as a free-standing community until 1936, when it was razed.

Although a common factor among Hooverville residents was unemployment, inhabitants took any work that became available, often laboring at such backbreaking, sporadic jobs as fruit picking or packing. Writer John Steinbeck (1902-68) featured a family who lived in a California Hooverville and sought farm work in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Grapes of Wrath," which was first published in 1939.

Hoover Out, Roosevelt In

In addition to the term "Hooverville," President Hoover's name was used derisively in other ways during the Great Depression. For example, newspapers used to shield the homeless from the cold were called "Hoover blankets," while empty pants pockets pulled inside out-demonstrating no coins in one's pockets-were "Hoover flags." When soles wore out of shoes, the cardboard used to replace them was dubbed "Hoover leather," and cars pulled by horses because gas was an unaffordable luxury were called "Hoover wagons."

Tensions between destitute citizens and the Hoover administration climaxed in the spring of 1932 when thousands of World War I veterans and their families and friends set up a Hooverville on the banks of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. In June, many of them marched to the Capitol to request early payment of the government bonuses they had been promised-money that would have alleviated the financial problems of many families. The government refused to pay, citing Depression-era budgetary restrictions. When most of the veterans refused to leave their shacks, Hoover sent in U.S. Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) to evict the so-called Bonus Army. MacArthur's troops set fire to the Hooverville and drove the group from the city with bayonets and tear gas. Hoover later claimed that MacArthur had used excessive force, but his words meant little to most of those affected.

Hoover also received criticism for signing, in June 1930, the controversial Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, which imposed a high tariff on foreign goods in an effort to prevent them from competing with U.S.-made products on the domestic market. However, some countries retaliated by raising their tariffs, and international trade was hampered. Between 1929 and 1932, the value of world trade declined by more than half.

By 1932, Hoover was so unpopular that he had no realistic hope of being re-elected, and Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) of New York won that year's presidential election in November by a landslide. Roosevelt's recovery program known as the New Deal eventually reduced unemployment, regulated banking and helped turn the ailing economy around with public works projects and other economic programs. By the early 1940s, many Hoovervilles had been torn down.

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During the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted approximately a decade, shantytowns appeared across the U.S. as unemployed people were evicted from their homes. As the Depression worsened in the 1930s, causing severe hardships for millions of Americans, many looked to the federal government for assistance.

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Brayden Twist

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Joshua Cole

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Public Roads - From 1916 to 1939: The Federal-State Partnership At Work , Summer 1996 -

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This is the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center.

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Cody Crocker

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The Boxcar Children is a children's book series originally created and written by the American first-grade school teacher Gertrude Chandler Warner. Today, the series includes nearly 160 titles, with more being released every year. The series is aimed at readers in grades 2-6.

Originally published in 1924 by Rand McNally (as The Box-Car Children) and reissued in a shorter revised form in 1942 by Albert Whitman & Company, The Boxcar Children tells the story of four orphaned children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny. They create a home for themselves in an abandoned boxcar in the forest. They eventually meet their grandfather, who is a wealthy and kind man (although the children had believed him to be cruel). The children decide to live with the grandfather, who moves the beloved boxcar to his backyard so the children can use it as a playhouse. The book was adapted as the film The Boxcar Children in 2014 and the sequel novel Surprise Island was released as a film in 2018. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association listed the original book as one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children". In 2012 the original novel was ranked among the all-time "Top 100 Chapter Books", or children's novels, in a survey published by School Library Journal.

In the subsequent books, the children encounter many adventures and mysteries in their neighborhood or at the locations they visit with their grandfather. The majority of the books are set in locations the children are visiting over school holidays such as summer vacation or Christmas break. Only the first 19 stories were written by creator Warner. Other books in the series have been written by other writers, but always feature the byline "Created by Gertrude Chandler Warner". The recent books in the series are set in the present day, whereas most of the original books were set in the 1920s and 1930s.

Main characters

(The characters are named here as they are in the revised edition of the original book, and its sequels. The family name in the 1924 original edition is Cordyce rather than Alden.)

Henry James Alden: is the oldest of the Alden children; in most books of the series, Henry is 14 years old (13 in the 1924 edition). He's shown to be calm, hardworking, rational, humble and very protective of his younger siblings. Henry also shows a knack for repairing things and is a natural athlete. In Warner's original books, Henry ages and eventually goes off to college in The Lighthouse Mystery.

Jessica "Jessie" Alden: ( Jess in the 1924 original edition) is usually 12 years old and is the older sister. She often acts motherly towards Benny and Violet and even Henry. She is often responsible for cooking. Jessie is described as being very tidy and organized. She is sometimes called Jess, but is mostly referred to as Jessie. She is not afraid of anything, adores the color blue, and is very strong. Jessie becomes shy whenever somebody calls her Jessica.

Violet Alden: is 10 years old in most of the books. She is the most sensitive of the children and is skillful at painting and sewing. She can frequently win over grouchy characters and is good with animals. Violet is often very shy and loves playing the violin. Her favorite color is violet or purple and she often wears one of those colors. She is the shyest of all the children, and sometimes helps Jessie take care of Benny.

Benjamin "Benny" Alden: is the youngest child at 6 years old (5 in the original 1924 edition). He celebrates his seventh birthday in Surprise Island and continues to age throughout the original series, until he is old enough for a department store job in the last original book, "Benny Uncovers a Mystery." (In reality, he is only 7 years old in that book, but because he pleads his grandfather and siblings, they take him along to get a job) Benny is known for his love of all food and the cracked pink cup he found in the dump. His endearingly childish qualities and comments make him a favorite among young readers. He is very enthusiastic. He loves Watch dearly and Benny was the one who named Watch.

Watch: is the dog of the Boxcar children. He acted as a "watchdog" when they lived in the boxcar and protected them. Watch was originally owned by a wealthy lady but ran away and was adopted by the Alden children. The lady was so charmed by the children that she permitted them to keep him. Watch is a Wire Fox Terrier (an Airedale in the 1924 edition), and the children found him while Henry was away at work. He had a thorn in his paw, and Jessie removed it. Because of this, he became known as her dog. In subsequent books, Watch's bed is in Jessie's bedroom.

James Henry Alden: is the wealthy and kind grandfather of the Alden children, allowing them a lot of freedom and always offering them advice. He takes care of the kids after the death of their parents. At first, the kids thought their grandfather was mean, and so they ran away from him, but later on, they realized the goodness of their grandfather and came to live with him. James Henry Alden also organizes the Field Day competitions.

Dr. Moore: (Dr. McAllister in the original 1924 edition) is the man who gave Henry a job and checked Violet when she was ill. He is the very same person who connected Henry, Jessie, Violet, Benny and Watch with their grandfather.

Secondary characters

Mrs. McGregor: The Aldens' housekeeper. Her husband was first seen in the third book of the series.

Mr. McGregor: He mows the lawn and he is Mr. Alden's conductor. He is also married to Mrs. McGregor.

Mike: Mike is Benny's best friend and appeared on Surprise Island.

John Joseph "Joe" Alden and Alice: The children's cousins/aunt and uncle. (Called both, but mostly cousins) Joe was first seen in the second book of the series, Surprise Island. Alice was first introduced in The Yellow House Mystery; she also married Joe in the same book. They moved to a new house in The Mystery of the Singing Ghost. They adopted Soo Lee from Korea.

Aunt Jane and Uncle Andy: The children's great aunt (Grandfather Alden's sister) and her husband. Aunt Jane was once unkind, but was changed in Mystery Ranch, the fourth book of the series.

John Carter: An employee of the children's grandfather. Does investigation and carries out the children's grandfather's wishes "off camera".

In April 2014, the animated film The Boxcar Children was released. The voice of Grandfather Alden is played by Martin Sheen, and Dr. Moore is voiced by J. K. Simmons. Zachary Gordon, Joey King, Mackenzie Foy, and Jadon Sand voiced Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny respectively. The film is also available on DVD.

The film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival / Kids (TiFF/Kids) in April 2014 and went on to play at 15 more festivals including Woods Hole International Film Festival, St. Louis International Film Festival and the Gijón International Film Festival in Spain. The film won Best Animated Feature Film at the 2015 St. Tropez International Film Festival.

The film was released by Entertainment One. It had a limited theatrical run in North America, came out on DVD and VOD on August 19, 2014. Streaming and TV rights were sold exclusively to Netflix on October 4, 2014. The film was directed and produced by Daniel Chuba and Mark A.Z. Dippe. The executive producer was Maureen Sargent Gorman.

The sequel film, The Boxcar Children: Surprise Island, was originally planned to be released in fall 2017. However, Fathom Events released the film in select theaters starting May 8, 2018, followed by a DVD release on August 14, 2018.

After the first novel, the children become amateur sleuths, and the subsequent series involves the children solving various mysteries and occasionally traveling to other locations as they do so. They stumble across a mystery no matter where they are, whether on vacation or in their own backyard. They usually solve the mystery with very little adult intervention, although adults are present in the novel (the author said she wrote about mostly-unsupervised children because that would appeal to children). Some of the mysteries border on the supernatural, although the practical Henry and Jessie always find the sensible reason for anything that appears other-worldly. Most of the mysteries involve thefts and usually involve the Alden children helping someone they know.

The series are divided into mysteries and specials; all of the specials were written after Warner's death. As of 2014, there are 145 mysteries and 21 specials in the series.

Warner's life was chronicled in the biography "Gertrude Chandler Warner and the Boxcar Children" by Mary Ellen Ellsworth, illustrated by Marie DeJohn, which tells the story of Warner's childhood living across the street from the railroad tracks, her bouts with poor health, her teaching career, her earliest attempts at writing, and her inspiration for The Boxcar Children.

In July 2004, a museum in Putnam, Connecticut, was opened in a red boxcar to honor Gertrude Warner and the Boxcar Children series. She is buried in Grove Street Cemetery, Putnam, Connecticut.

As she wrote the story, Warner read it to her classes and rewrote it many times so the words were easy to understand. Some of her pupils spoke other languages at home and were just learning English, so The Boxcar Children gave them a fun story that was easy to read. Warner once wrote that the original book "raised a storm of protest from librarians who thought the children were having too good a time without any parental control! That is exactly why children like it!"

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The Boxcar Children is a children's book series originally created and written by the American first-grade school teacher Gertrude Chandler Warner. Today, the series includes nearly 160 titles, with more being released every year. The series is aimed at readers in grades 2-6.

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Blake Gagnon

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Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. Constructed between 1931 and 1936, during the Great Depression, it was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over 100 lives. In bills passed by Congress during its construction, it was referred to as the Hoover Dam, after President Herbert Hoover, but was named the Boulder Dam by the Roosevelt administration. In 1947, the name Hoover Dam was restored by Congress.

Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. In 1928, Congress authorized the project. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium named Six Companies, Inc., which began construction in early 1931. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques used were unproven. The torrid summer weather and lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties. Nevertheless, Six Companies turned the dam over to the federal government on March 1, 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule.

Hoover Dam impounds Lake Mead and is located near Boulder City, Nevada, a municipality originally constructed for workers on the construction project, about 30 mi (48 km) south-east of Las Vegas, Nevada. The dam's generators provide power for public and private utilities in Nevada, Arizona, and California. Hoover Dam is a major tourist attraction, with 7 million tourists a year. The heavily traveled U.S. Route 93 (US 93) ran along the dam's crest until October 2010, when the Hoover Dam Bypass opened.

River view of the future dam site, c. 1904

As the United States developed the Southwest, the Colorado River was seen as a potential source of irrigation water. An initial attempt at diverting the river for irrigation purposes occurred in the late 1890s, when land speculator William Beatty built the Alamo Canal just north of the Mexican border; the canal dipped into Mexico before running to a desolate area Beatty named the Imperial Valley. Though water from the Alamo Canal allowed for the widespread settlement of the valley, the canal proved expensive to operate. After a catastrophic breach that caused the Colorado River to fill the Salton Sea, the Southern Pacific Railroad spent $3 million in 1906-07 to stabilize the waterway, an amount it hoped in vain that it would be reimbursed for by the federal government. Even after the waterway was stabilized, it proved unsatisfactory because of constant disputes with landowners on the Mexican side of the border.

As the technology of electric power transmission improved, the Lower Colorado was considered for its hydroelectric-power potential. In 1902, the Edison Electric Company of Los Angeles surveyed the river in the hope of building a 40-foot (12 m) rock dam which could generate 10,000 horsepower (7,500 kW). However, at the time, the limit of transmission of electric power was 80 miles (130 km), and there were few customers (mostly mines) within that limit. Edison allowed land options it held on the river to lapse-including an option for what became the site of Hoover Dam.

In the following years, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), known as the Reclamation Service at the time, also considered the Lower Colorado as the site for a dam. Service chief Arthur Powell Davis proposed using dynamite to collapse the walls of Boulder Canyon, 20 miles (32 km) north of the eventual dam site, into the river. The river would carry off the smaller pieces of debris, and a dam would be built incorporating the remaining rubble. In 1922, after considering it for several years, the Reclamation Service finally rejected the proposal, citing doubts about the unproven technique and questions as to whether it would, in fact, save money.

In 1922, the Reclamation Service presented a report calling for the development of a dam on the Colorado River for flood control and electric power generation. The report was principally authored by Davis and was called the Fall-Davis report after Interior Secretary Albert Fall. The Fall-Davis report cited use of the Colorado River as a federal concern because the river's basin covered several states, and the river eventually entered Mexico. Though the Fall-Davis report called for a dam "at or near Boulder Canyon", the Reclamation Service (which was renamed the Bureau of Reclamation the following year) found that canyon unsuitable. One potential site at Boulder Canyon was bisected by a geologic fault; two others were so narrow there was no space for a construction camp at the bottom of the canyon or for a spillway. The Service investigated Black Canyon and found it ideal; a railway could be laid from the railhead in Las Vegas to the top of the dam site. Despite the site change, the dam project was referred to as the "Boulder Canyon Project".

Sketch of the proposed dam site and reservoir, c. 1921

With little guidance on water allocation from the Supreme Court, proponents of the dam feared endless litigation. Delph Carpenter, a Colorado attorney, proposed that the seven states which fell within the river's basin (California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming) form an interstate compact, with the approval of Congress. Such compacts were authorized by Article I of the United States Constitution but had never been concluded among more than two states. In 1922, representatives of seven states met with then- Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Initial talks produced no result, but when the Supreme Court handed down the Wyoming v. Colorado decision undermining the claims of the upstream states, they became anxious to reach an agreement. The resulting Colorado River Compact was signed on November 24, 1922.

Legislation to authorize the dam was introduced repeatedly by two California Republicans, Representative Phil Swing and Senator Hiram Johnson, but representatives from other parts of the country considered the project as hugely expensive and one that would mostly benefit California. The 1927 Mississippi flood made Midwestern and Southern congressmen and senators more sympathetic toward the dam project. On March 12, 1928, the failure of the St. Francis Dam, constructed by the city of Los Angeles, caused a disastrous flood that killed up to 600 people. As that dam was a curved-gravity type, similar in design to the arch-gravity as was proposed for the Black Canyon dam, opponents claimed that the Black Canyon dam's safety could not be guaranteed. Congress authorized a board of engineers to review plans for the proposed dam. The Colorado River Board found the project feasible, but warned that should the dam fail, every downstream Colorado River community would be destroyed, and that the river might change course and empty into the Salton Sea. The Board cautioned: "To avoid such possibilities, the proposed dam should be constructed on conservative if not ultra-conservative lines."

On December 21, 1928, President Coolidge signed the bill authorizing the dam. The Boulder Canyon Project Act appropriated $165 million for the project along with the downstream Imperial Dam and All-American Canal, a replacement for Beatty's canal entirely on the U.S. side of the border. It also permitted the compact to go into effect when at least six of the seven states approved it. This occurred on March 6, 1929, with Utah's ratification; Arizona did not approve it until 1944.

Design, preparation and contracting

Even before Congress approved the Boulder Canyon Project, the Bureau of Reclamation was considering what kind of dam should be used. Officials eventually decided on a massive concrete arch-gravity dam, the design of which was overseen by the Bureau's chief design engineer John L. Savage. The monolithic dam would be thick at the bottom and thin near the top and would present a convex face towards the water above the dam. The curving arch of the dam would transmit the water's force into the abutments, in this case the rock walls of the canyon. The wedge-shaped dam would be 660 ft (200 m) thick at the bottom, narrowing to 45 ft (14 m) at the top, leaving room for a highway connecting Nevada and Arizona.

On January 10, 1931, the Bureau made the bid documents available to interested parties, at five dollars a copy. The government was to provide the materials, and the contractor was to prepare the site and build the dam. The dam was described in minute detail, covering 100 pages of text and 76 drawings. A $2 million bid bond was to accompany each bid; the winner would have to post a $5 million performance bond. The contractor had seven years to build the dam, or penalties would ensue.

The Wattis Brothers, heads of the Utah Construction Company, were interested in bidding on the project, but lacked the money for the performance bond. They lacked sufficient resources even in combination with their longtime partners, Morrison-Knudsen, which employed the nation's leading dam builder, Frank Crowe. They formed a joint venture to bid for the project with Pacific Bridge Company of Portland, Oregon; Henry J. Kaiser & W. A. Bechtel Company of San Francisco; MacDonald & Kahn Ltd. of Los Angeles; and the J.F. Shea Company of Portland, Oregon. The joint venture was called Six Companies, Inc. as Bechtel and Kaiser were considered one company for purposes of Six in the name. The name was descriptive and was an inside joke among the San Franciscans in the bid, where "Six Companies" was also a Chinese benevolent association in the city. There were three valid bids, and Six Companies' bid of $48,890,955 was the lowest, within $24,000 of the confidential government estimate of what the dam would cost to build, and five million dollars less than the next-lowest bid.

The city of Las Vegas had lobbied hard to be the headquarters for the dam construction, closing its many speakeasies when the decision maker, Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur, came to town. Instead, Wilbur announced in early 1930 that a model city was to be built in the desert near the dam site. This town became known as Boulder City, Nevada. Construction of a rail line joining Las Vegas and the dam site began in September 1930.

Soon after the dam was authorized, increasing numbers of unemployed people converged on southern Nevada. Las Vegas, then a small city of some 5,000, saw between 10,000 and 20,000 unemployed descend on it. A government camp was established for surveyors and other personnel near the dam site; this soon became surrounded by a squatters' camp. Known as McKeeversville, the camp was home to men hoping for work on the project, together with their families. Another camp, on the flats along the Colorado River, was officially called Williamsville, but was known to its inhabitants as "Ragtown". When construction began, Six Companies hired large numbers of workers, with more than 3,000 on the payroll by 1932 and with employment peaking at 5,251 in July 1934. "Mongolian" (Chinese) labor was prevented by the construction contract, while the number of black people employed by Six Companies never exceeded thirty, mostly lowest-pay-scale laborers in a segregated crew, who were issued separate water buckets.

As part of the contract, Six Companies, Inc. was to build Boulder City to house the workers. The original timetable called for Boulder City to be built before the dam project began, but President Hoover ordered work on the dam to begin in March 1931 rather than in October. The company built bunkhouses, attached to the canyon wall, to house 480 single men at what became known as River Camp. Workers with families were left to provide their own accommodations until Boulder City could be completed, and many lived in Ragtown. The site of Hoover Dam endures extremely hot weather, and the summer of 1931 was especially torrid, with the daytime high averaging 119.9 °F (48.8 °C). Sixteen workers and other riverbank residents died of heat prostration between June 25 and July 26, 1931.

General Superintendent Frank Crowe (right) with Bureau of Reclamation engineer Walker Young in 1935

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or "Wobblies"), though much-reduced from their heyday as militant labor organizers in the early years of the century, hoped to unionize the Six Companies workers by capitalizing on their discontent. They sent eleven organizers, several of whom were arrested by Las Vegas police. On August 7, 1931, the company cut wages for all tunnel workers. Although the workers sent the organizers away, not wanting to be associated with the "Wobblies", they formed a committee to represent them with the company. The committee drew up a list of demands that evening and presented them to Crowe the following morning. He was noncommittal. The workers hoped that Crowe, the general superintendent of the job, would be sympathetic; instead, he gave a scathing interview to a newspaper, describing the workers as "malcontents".

On the morning of the 9th, Crowe met with the committee and told them that management refused their demands, was stopping all work, and was laying off the entire work force, except for a few office workers and carpenters. The workers were given until 5 p.m. to vacate the premises. Concerned that a violent confrontation was imminent, most workers took their paychecks and left for Las Vegas to await developments. Two days later, the remainder were talked into leaving by law enforcement. On August 13, the company began hiring workers again, and two days later, the strike was called off. While the workers received none of their demands, the company guaranteed there would be no further reductions in wages. Living conditions began to improve as the first residents moved into Boulder City in late 1931.

A second labor action took place in July 1935, as construction on the dam wound down. When a Six Companies manager altered working times to force workers to take lunch on their own time, workers responded with a strike. Emboldened by Crowe's reversal of the lunch decree, workers raised their demands to include a $1-per-day raise. The company agreed to ask the Federal government to supplement the pay, but no money was forthcoming from Washington. The strike ended.

Before the dam could be built, the Colorado River needed to be diverted away from the construction site. To accomplish this, four diversion tunnels were driven through the canyon walls, two on the Nevada side and two on the Arizona side. These tunnels were 56 ft (17 m) in diameter. Their combined length was nearly 16,000 ft, or more than 3 miles (5 km). The contract required these tunnels to be completed by October 1, 1933, with a $3,000-per-day fine to be assessed for any delay. To meet the deadline, Six Companies had to complete work by early 1933, since only in late fall and winter was the water level in the river low enough to safely divert.

Tunneling began at the lower portals of the Nevada tunnels in May 1931. Shortly afterward, work began on two similar tunnels in the Arizona canyon wall. In March 1932, work began on lining the tunnels with concrete. First the base, or invert, was poured. Gantry cranes, running on rails through the entire length of each tunnel were used to place the concrete. The sidewalls were poured next. Movable sections of steel forms were used for the sidewalls. Finally, using pneumatic guns, the overheads were filled in. The concrete lining is 3 feet (1 m) thick, reducing the finished tunnel diameter to 50 ft (15 m). The river was diverted into the two Arizona tunnels on November 13, 1932; the Nevada tunnels were kept in reserve for high water. This was done by exploding a temporary cofferdam protecting the Arizona tunnels while at the same time dumping rubble into the river until its natural course was blocked.

Following the completion of the dam, the entrances to the two outer diversion tunnels were sealed at the opening and halfway through the tunnels with large concrete plugs. The downstream halves of the tunnels following the inner plugs are now the main bodies of the spillway tunnels. The inner diversion tunnels were plugged at approximately one-third of their length, beyond which they now carry steel pipes connecting the intake towers to the power plant and outlet works. The inner tunnels' outlets are equipped with gates that can be closed to drain the tunnels for maintenance.

Groundworks, rock clearance and grout curtain

To protect the construction site from the Colorado River and to facilitate the river's diversion, two cofferdams were constructed. Work on the upper cofferdam began in September 1932, even though the river had not yet been diverted. The cofferdams were designed to protect against the possibility of the river's flooding a site at which two thousand men might be at work, and their specifications were covered in the bid documents in nearly as much detail as the dam itself. The upper cofferdam was 96 ft (29 m) high, and 750 feet (230 m) thick at its base, thicker than the dam itself. It contained 650,000 cubic yards (500,000 m ³) of material.

When the cofferdams were in place and the construction site was drained of water, excavation for the dam foundation began. For the dam to rest on solid rock, it was necessary to remove accumulated erosion soils and other loose materials in the riverbed until sound bedrock was reached. Work on the foundation excavations was completed in June 1933. During this excavation, approximately 1,500,000 cu yd (1,100,000 m ³) of material was removed. Since the dam was an arch-gravity type, the side-walls of the canyon would bear the force of the impounded lake. Therefore, the side-walls were also excavated to reach virgin rock, as weathered rock might provide pathways for water seepage. Shovels for the excavation came from the Marion Power Shovel Company.

The men who removed this rock were called "high scalers". While suspended from the top of the canyon with ropes, the high-scalers climbed down the canyon walls and removed the loose rock with jackhammers and dynamite. Falling objects were the most common cause of death on the dam site; the high scalers' work thus helped ensure worker safety. One high scaler was able to save a life in a more direct manner: when a government inspector lost his grip on a safety line and began tumbling down a slope towards almost certain death, a high scaler was able to intercept him and pull him into the air. The construction site had become a magnet for tourists. The high scalers were prime attractions and showed off for the watchers. The high scalers received considerable media attention, with one worker dubbed the "Human Pendulum" for swinging co-workers (and, at other times, cases of dynamite) across the canyon. To protect themselves against falling objects, some high scalers dipped cloth hats in tar and allowed them to harden. When workers wearing such headgear were struck hard enough to inflict broken jaws, they sustained no skull damage. Six Companies ordered thousands of what initially were called "hard boiled hats" (later " hard hats") and strongly encouraged their use.

The cleared, underlying rock foundation of the dam site was reinforced with grout, forming a grout curtain. Holes were driven into the walls and base of the canyon, as deep as 150 feet (46 m) into the rock, and any cavities encountered were to be filled with grout. This was done to stabilize the rock, to prevent water from seeping past the dam through the canyon rock, and to limit "uplift"-upward pressure from water seeping under the dam. The workers were under severe time constraints due to the beginning of the concrete pour. When they encountered hot springs or cavities too large to readily fill, they moved on without resolving the problem. A total of 58 of the 393 holes were incompletely filled. After the dam was completed and the lake began to fill, large numbers of significant leaks caused the Bureau of Reclamation to examine the situation. It found that the work had been incompletely done, and was based on less than a full understanding of the canyon's geology. New holes were drilled from inspection galleries inside the dam into the surrounding bedrock. It took nine years (1938-47) under relative secrecy to complete the supplemental grout curtain.

Columns of Hoover Dam being filled with concrete, February 1934 (looking upstream from the Nevada rim)

The first concrete was poured into the dam on June 6, 1933, 18 months ahead of schedule. Since concrete heats and contracts as it cures, the potential for uneven cooling and contraction of the concrete posed a serious problem. Bureau of Reclamation engineers calculated that if the dam were to be built in a single continuous pour, the concrete would take 125 years to cool, and the resulting stresses would cause the dam to crack and crumble. Instead, the ground where the dam would rise was marked with rectangles, and concrete blocks in columns were poured, some as large as 50 ft square (15 m) and 5 feet (1.5 m) high. Each five-foot form contained a set of 1-inch (25 mm) steel pipes; cool river water would be poured through the pipes, followed by ice-cold water from a refrigeration plant. When an individual block had cured and had stopped contracting, the pipes were filled with grout. Grout was also used to fill the hairline spaces between columns, which were grooved to increase the strength of the joints.

The concrete was delivered in huge steel buckets 7 feet high (2.1 m) and almost 7 feet in diameter; Crowe was awarded two patents for their design. These buckets, which weighed 20 short tons (18.1 t; 17.9 long tons) when full, were filled at two massive concrete plants on the Nevada side, and were delivered to the site in special railcars. The buckets were then suspended from aerial cableways which were used to deliver the bucket to a specific column. As the required grade of aggregate in the concrete differed depending on placement in the dam (from pea-sized gravel to 9 inches [230 mm] stones), it was vital that the bucket be maneuvered to the proper column. When the bottom of the bucket opened up, disgorging 8 cu yd (6.1 m ³) of concrete, a team of men worked it throughout the form. Although there are myths that men were caught in the pour and are entombed in the dam to this day, each bucket deepened the concrete in a form by only 1 inch (25 mm), and Six Companies engineers would not have permitted a flaw caused by the presence of a human body.

A total of 3,250,000 cubic yards (2,480,000 cubic meters) of concrete was used in the dam before concrete pouring ceased on May 29, 1935. In addition, 1,110,000 cu yd (850,000 m ³) were used in the power plant and other works. More than 582 miles (937 km) of cooling pipes were placed within the concrete. Overall, there is enough concrete in the dam to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York. Concrete cores were removed from the dam for testing in 1995; they showed that "Hoover Dam's concrete has continued to slowly gain strength" and the dam is composed of a "durable concrete having a compressive strength exceeding the range typically found in normal mass concrete". Hoover Dam concrete is not subject to alkali-silica reaction (ASR), as the Hoover Dam builders happened to use nonreactive aggregate, unlike that at downstream Parker Dam, where ASR has caused measurable deterioration.

The upstream face of Hoover Dam slowly disappears as Lake Mead fills, May 1935 (looking downstream from the Arizona rim)

With most work finished on the dam itself (the powerhouse remained uncompleted), a formal dedication ceremony was arranged for September 30, 1935, to coincide with a western tour being made by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The morning of the dedication, it was moved forward three hours from 2 p.m. Pacific time to 11 a.m.; this was done because Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes had reserved a radio slot for the President for 2 p.m. but officials did not realize until the day of the ceremony that the slot was for 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Despite the change in the ceremony time, and temperatures of 102 °F (39 °C), 10,000 people were present for the President's speech, in which he avoided mentioning the name of former President Hoover, who was not invited to the ceremony. To mark the occasion, a three-cent stamp was issued by the United States Post Office Department -bearing the name "Boulder Dam", the official name of the dam between 1933 and 1947. After the ceremony, Roosevelt made the first visit by any American president to Las Vegas.

Most work had been completed by the dedication, and Six Companies negotiated with the government through late 1935 and early 1936 to settle all claims and arrange for the formal transfer of the dam to the Federal Government. The parties came to an agreement and on March 1, 1936, Secretary Ickes formally accepted the dam on behalf of the government. Six Companies was not required to complete work on one item, a concrete plug for one of the bypass tunnels, as the tunnel had to be used to take in irrigation water until the powerhouse went into operation.

Oskar J. W. Hansen's memorial at the dam which reads in part "They died to make the desert bloom."[74]

There were 112 deaths reported as associated with the construction of the dam. The first was Bureau of Reclamation employee Harold Connelly who died on May 15, 1921, after falling from a barge while surveying the Colorado River for an ideal spot for the dam. Surveyor John Gregory ("J.G.") Tierney, who drowned on December 20, 1922, in a flash flood while looking for an ideal spot for the dam was the second person. The official list's final death occurred on December 20, 1935, when Patrick Tierney, electrician's helper and the son of J.G. Tierney, fell from one of the two Arizona-side intake towers. Included in the fatality list are three workers who took their own lives on site, one in 1932 and two in 1933. Of the 112 fatalities, 91 were Six Companies employees, three were Bureau of Reclamation employees, and one was a visitor to the site; the remainder were employees of various contractors not part of Six Companies.

Ninety-six of the deaths occurred during construction at the site. Not included in the official number of fatalities were deaths that were recorded as pneumonia. Workers alleged that this diagnosis was a cover for death from carbon monoxide poisoning (brought on by the use of gasoline-fueled vehicles in the diversion tunnels), and a classification used by Six Companies to avoid paying compensation claims. The site's diversion tunnels frequently reached 140 °F (60 °C), enveloped in thick plumes of vehicle exhaust gases. A total of 42 workers were recorded as having died from pneumonia and were not included in the above total; none were listed as having died from carbon monoxide poisoning. No deaths of non-workers from pneumonia were recorded in Boulder City during the construction period.

The initial plans for the facade of the dam, the power plant, the outlet tunnels and ornaments clashed with the modern look of an arch dam. The Bureau of Reclamation, more concerned with the dam's functionality, adorned it with a Gothic-inspired balustrade and eagle statues. This initial design was criticized by many as being too plain and unremarkable for a project of such immense scale, so Los Angeles-based architect Gordon B. Kaufmann, then the supervising architect to the Bureau of Reclamation, was brought in to redesign the exteriors. Kaufmann greatly streamlined the design and applied an elegant Art Deco style to the entire project. He designed sculpted turrets rising seamlessly from the dam face and clock faces on the intake towers set for the time in Nevada and Arizona-both states are in different time zones, but since Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, the clocks display the same time for more than half the year.

Tile floor designed by Allen Tupper True

At Kaufmann's request, Denver artist Allen Tupper True was hired to handle the design and decoration of the walls and floors of the new dam. True's design scheme incorporated motifs of the Navajo and Pueblo tribes of the region. Although some were initially opposed to these designs, True was given the go-ahead and was officially appointed consulting artist. With the assistance of the National Laboratory of Anthropology, True researched authentic decorative motifs from Indian sand paintings, textiles, baskets and ceramics. The images and colors are based on Native American visions of rain, lightning, water, clouds, and local animals-lizards, serpents, birds-and on the Southwestern landscape of stepped mesas. In these works, which are integrated into the walkways and interior halls of the dam, True also reflected on the machinery of the operation, making the symbolic patterns appear both ancient and modern.

With the agreement of Kaufmann and the engineers, True also devised for the pipes and machinery an innovative color-coding which was implemented throughout all BOR projects. True's consulting artist job lasted through 1942; it was extended so he could complete design work for the Parker, Shasta and Grand Coulee dams and power plants. True's work on the Hoover Dam was humorously referred to in a poem published in The New Yorker, part of which read, "lose the spark, and justify the dream; but also worthy of remark will be the color scheme".

Complementing Kaufmann and True's work, sculptor Oskar J. W. Hansen designed many of the sculptures on and around the dam. His works include the monument of dedication plaza, a plaque to memorialize the workers killed and the bas-reliefs on the elevator towers. In his words, Hansen wanted his work to express "the immutable calm of intellectual resolution, and the enormous power of trained physical strength, equally enthroned in placid triumph of scientific accomplishment", because "[t]he building of Hoover Dam belongs to the sagas of the daring." Hansen's dedication plaza, on the Nevada abutment, contains a sculpture of two winged figures flanking a flagpole.

Surrounding the base of the monument is a terrazzo floor embedded with a "star map". The map depicts the Northern Hemisphere sky at the moment of President Roosevelt's dedication of the dam. This is intended to help future astronomers, if necessary, calculate the exact date of dedication. The 30-foot-high (9.1 m) bronze figures, dubbed "Winged Figures of the Republic", were both formed in a continuous pour. To put such large bronzes into place without marring the highly polished bronze surface, they were placed on ice and guided into position as the ice melted. Hansen's bas-relief on the Nevada elevator tower depicts the benefits of the dam: flood control, navigation, irrigation, water storage, and power. The bas-relief on the Arizona elevator depicts, in his words, "the visages of those Indian tribes who have inhabited mountains and plains from ages distant."

Water is released from the jet-flow gates for testing in 1998.[92]

Excavation for the powerhouse was carried out simultaneously with the excavation for the dam foundation and abutments. The excavation of this U-shaped structure located at the downstream toe of the dam was completed in late 1933 with the first concrete placed in November 1933. Filling of Lake Mead began February 1, 1935, even before the last of the concrete was poured that May. The powerhouse was one of the projects uncompleted at the time of the formal dedication on September 30, 1935; a crew of 500 men remained to finish it and other structures. To make the powerhouse roof bombproof, it was constructed of layers of concrete, rock, and steel with a total thickness of about 3.5 feet (1.1 m), topped with layers of sand and tar.

In the latter half of 1936, water levels in Lake Mead were high enough to permit power generation, and the first three Allis Chalmers built Francis turbine- generators, all on the Nevada side, began operating. In March 1937, one more Nevada generator went online and the first Arizona generator by August. By September 1939, four more generators were operating, and the dam's power plant became the largest hydroelectricity facility in the world. The final generator was not placed in service until 1961, bringing the maximum generating capacity to 1,345 megawatts at the time. Original plans called for 16 large generators, eight on each side of the river, but two smaller generators were installed instead of one large one on the Arizona side for a total of 17. The smaller generators were used to serve smaller communities at a time when the output of each generator was dedicated to a single municipality, before the dam's total power output was placed on the grid and made arbitrarily distributable.

Before water from Lake Mead reaches the turbines, it enters the intake towers and then four gradually narrowing penstocks which funnel the water down towards the powerhouse. The intakes provide a maximum hydraulic head (water pressure) of 590 ft (180 m) as the water reaches a speed of about 85 mph (140 km/h). The entire flow of the Colorado River usually passes through the turbines. The spillways and outlet works (jet-flow gates) are rarely used. The jet-flow gates, located in concrete structures 180 feet (55 m) above the river and also at the outlets of the inner diversion tunnels at river level, may be used to divert water around the dam in emergency or flood conditions, but have never done so, and in practice are used only to drain water from the penstocks for maintenance. Following an uprating project from 1986 to 1993, the total gross power rating for the plant, including two 2.4 megawatt Pelton turbine-generators that power Hoover Dam's own operations is a maximum capacity of 2080 megawatts. The annual generation of Hoover Dam varies. The maximum net generation was 10.348 TWh in 1984, and the minimum since 1940 was 2.648 TWh in 1956. The average power generated was 4.2 TWh/year for 1947-2008. In 2015, the dam generated 3.6 TWh.

The amount of electricity generated by Hoover Dam has been decreasing along with the falling water level in Lake Mead due to the prolonged drought since year 2000 and high demand for the Colorado River's water. By 2014 its generating capacity was downrated by 23% to 1592 MW and was providing power only during periods of peak demand. Lake Mead fell to a new record low elevation of 1,071.61 feet (326.63 m) on July 1, 2016, before beginning to rebound slowly. Under its original design, the dam would no longer be able to generate power once the water level fell below 1,050 feet (320 m), which might have occurred in 2017 had water restrictions not been enforced. To lower the minimum power pool elevation from 1,050 to 950 feet (320 to 290 m), five wide-head turbines, designed to work efficiently with less flow, were installed. Water levels were maintained at over 1,075 feet (328 m) in 2018 and 2019, but fell to a new record low of 1,071.55 feet (326.61 m) on June 10, 2021 and were projected to fall below 1,066 feet (325 m) by the end of 2021.

Control of water was the primary concern in the building of the dam. Power generation has allowed the dam project to be self-sustaining: proceeds from the sale of power repaid the 50-year construction loan, and those revenues also finance the multimillion-dollar yearly maintenance budget. Power is generated in step with and only with the release of water in response to downstream water demands.

Lake Mead and downstream releases from the dam also provide water for both municipal and irrigation uses. Water released from the Hoover Dam eventually reaches several canals. The Colorado River Aqueduct and Central Arizona Project branch off Lake Havasu while the All-American Canal is supplied by the Imperial Dam. In total, water from Lake Mead serves 18 million people in Arizona, Nevada, and California and supplies the irrigation of over 1,000,000 acres (400,000 ha) of land.

In 2018, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) proposed a $3 billion pumped-storage hydroelectricity project-a "battery" of sorts-that would use wind and solar power to recirculate water back up to Lake Mead from a pumping station 20 miles (32 km) downriver.

Power distribution

Electricity from the dam's powerhouse was originally sold pursuant to a fifty-year contract, authorized by Congress in 1934, which ran from 1937 to 1987. In 1984, Congress passed a new statute which set power allocations to southern California, Arizona, and Nevada from the dam from 1987 to 2017. The powerhouse was run under the original authorization by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Southern California Edison; in 1987, the Bureau of Reclamation assumed control. In 2011, Congress enacted legislation extending the current contracts until 2067, after setting aside 5% of Hoover Dam's power for sale to Native American tribes, electric cooperatives, and other entities. The new arrangement began on October 1, 2017.

The Bureau of Reclamation reports that the energy generated under the contracts ending in 2017 was allocated as follows:

Tourists gather around one of the generators in the Nevada wing of the powerhouse to hear its operation explained, September 1940.

A worker stands by the 30 ft (9.1 m) diameter Nevada penstock before its junction with another penstock that delivers water to a turbine.

Water enters the Arizona spillway (left) during the 1983 floods. Lake Mead water level was 1,225.6 ft (373.6 m)

The dam is protected against over-topping by two spillways. The spillway entrances are located behind each dam abutment, running roughly parallel to the canyon walls. The spillway entrance arrangement forms a classic side-flow weir with each spillway containing four 100-foot-long (30 m) and 16-foot-wide (4.9 m) steel-drum gates. Each gate weighs 5,000,000 pounds (2,300 metric tons) and can be operated manually or automatically. Gates are raised and lowered depending on water levels in the reservoir and flood conditions. The gates cannot entirely prevent water from entering the spillways but can maintain an extra 16 ft (4.9 m) of lake level.

Water flowing over the spillways falls dramatically into 600-foot-long (180 m), 50-foot-wide (15 m) spillway tunnels before connecting to the outer diversion tunnels and reentering the main river channel below the dam. This complex spillway entrance arrangement combined with the approximate 700-foot (210 m) elevation drop from the top of the reservoir to the river below was a difficult engineering problem and posed numerous design challenges. Each spillway's capacity of 200,000 cu ft/s (5,700 m ³/s) was empirically verified in post-construction tests in 1941.

The large spillway tunnels have only been used twice, for testing in 1941 and because of flooding in 1983. Both times, when inspecting the tunnels after the spillways were used, engineers found major damage to the concrete linings and underlying rock. The 1941 damage was attributed to a slight misalignment of the tunnel invert (or base), which caused cavitation, a phenomenon in fast-flowing liquids in which vapor bubbles collapse with explosive force. In response to this finding, the tunnels were patched with special heavy-duty concrete and the surface of the concrete was polished mirror-smooth. The spillways were modified in 1947 by adding flip buckets, which both slow the water and decrease the spillway's effective capacity, in an attempt to eliminate conditions thought to have contributed to the 1941 damage. The 1983 damage, also due to cavitation, led to the installation of aerators in the spillways. Tests at Grand Coulee Dam showed that the technique worked, in principle.

There are two lanes for automobile traffic across the top of the dam, which formerly served as the Colorado River crossing for U.S. Route 93. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, authorities expressed security concerns and the Hoover Dam Bypass project was expedited. Pending the completion of the bypass, restricted traffic was permitted over Hoover Dam. Some types of vehicles were inspected prior to crossing the dam while semi-trailer trucks, buses carrying luggage, and enclosed- box trucks over 40 ft (12 m) long were not allowed on the dam at all, and were diverted to U.S. Route 95 or Nevada State Routes 163/ 68. The four-lane Hoover Dam Bypass opened on October 19, 2010. It includes a composite steel and concrete arch bridge, the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, 1,500 ft (460 m) downstream from the dam. With the opening of the bypass, through traffic is no longer allowed across Hoover Dam; dam visitors are allowed to use the existing roadway to approach from the Nevada side and cross to parking lots and other facilities on the Arizona side.

Hoover Dam opened for tours in 1937 after its completion but following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, it was closed to the public when the United States entered World War II, during which only authorized traffic, in convoys, was permitted. After the war, it reopened September 2, 1945, and by 1953, annual attendance had risen to 448,081. The dam closed on November 25, 1963, and March 31, 1969, days of mourning in remembrance of Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower. In 1995, a new visitors' center was built, and the following year, visits exceeded one million for the first time. The dam closed again to the public on September 11, 2001; modified tours were resumed in December and a new "Discovery Tour" was added the following year. Today, nearly a million people per year take the tours of the dam offered by the Bureau of Reclamation. Increased security concerns by the government have led to most of the interior structure's being inaccessible to tourists. As a result, few of True's decorations can now be seen by visitors. Visitors can only purchase tickets on-site and have the options of a guided tour of the whole facility or only the power plant area. The only self-guided tour option is for the visitor center itself, where visitors can view various exhibits and enjoy a 360-degree view of the dam.

View upstream from Hoover Dam, October 2021, during the Southwestern North American megadrought

The changes in water flow and use caused by Hoover Dam's construction and operation have had a large impact on the Colorado River Delta. The construction of the dam has been implicated in causing the decline of this estuarine ecosystem. For six years after the construction of the dam, while Lake Mead filled, virtually no water reached the mouth of the river. The delta's estuary, which once had a freshwater-saltwater mixing zone stretching 40 miles (64 km) south of the river's mouth, was turned into an inverse estuary where the level of salinity was higher close to the river's mouth.

The Colorado River had experienced natural flooding before the construction of the Hoover Dam. The dam eliminated the natural flooding, threatening many species adapted to the flooding, including both plants and animals. The construction of the dam devastated the populations of native fish in the river downstream from the dam. Four species of fish native to the Colorado River, the Bonytail chub, Colorado pikeminnow, Humpback chub, and Razorback sucker, are listed as endangered.

1933 Los Angeles Times political cartoon commenting on the attempts of Ickes to keep "Hoover" off the dam.

During the years of lobbying leading up to the passage of legislation authorizing the dam in 1928, the press generally referred to the dam as "Boulder Dam" or as "Boulder Canyon Dam", even though the proposed site had shifted to Black Canyon. The Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928 (BCPA) never mentioned a proposed name or title for the dam. The BCPA merely allows the government to "construct, operate, and maintain a dam and incidental works in the main stream of the Colorado River at Black Canyon or Boulder Canyon".

When Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur spoke at the ceremony starting the building of the railway between Las Vegas and the dam site on September 17, 1930, he named the dam "Hoover Dam", citing a tradition of naming dams after Presidents, though none had been so honored during their terms of office. Wilbur justified his choice on the ground that Hoover was "the great engineer whose vision and persistence ... has done so much to make [the dam] possible". One writer complained in response that "the Great Engineer had quickly drained, ditched, and dammed the country."

After Hoover's election defeat in 1932 and the accession of the Roosevelt administration, Secretary Ickes ordered on May 13, 1933, that the dam be referred to as Boulder Dam. Ickes stated that Wilbur had been imprudent in naming the dam after a sitting president, that Congress had never ratified his choice, and that it had long been referred to as Boulder Dam. Unknown to the general public, Attorney General Homer Cummings informed Ickes that Congress had indeed used the name "Hoover Dam" in five different bills appropriating money for construction of the dam. The official status this conferred to the name "Hoover Dam" had been noted on the floor of the House of Representatives by Congressman Edward T. Taylor of Colorado on December 12, 1930, but was likewise ignored by Ickes.

When Ickes spoke at the dedication ceremony on September 30, 1935, he was determined, as he recorded in his diary, "to try to nail down for good and all the name Boulder Dam." At one point in the speech, he spoke the words "Boulder Dam" five times within thirty seconds. Further, he suggested that if the dam were to be named after any one person, it should be for California Senator Hiram Johnson, a lead sponsor of the authorizing legislation. Roosevelt also referred to the dam as Boulder Dam, and the Republican-leaning Los Angeles Times, which at the time of Ickes' name change had run an editorial cartoon showing Ickes ineffectively chipping away at an enormous sign "HOOVER DAM", reran it showing Roosevelt reinforcing Ickes, but having no greater success.

In the following years, the name "Boulder Dam" failed to fully take hold, with many Americans using both names interchangeably and mapmakers divided as to which name should be printed. Memories of the Great Depression faded, and Hoover to some extent rehabilitated himself through good works during and after World War II. In 1947, a bill passed both Houses of Congress unanimously restoring the name "Hoover Dam." Ickes, who was by then a private citizen, opposed the change, stating, "I didn't know Hoover was that small a man to take credit for something he had nothing to do with."

Hoover Dam was recognized as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1984. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985, cited for its engineering innovations.

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Fiedler, William R. (October 21-22, 2010). Wiltshire, Richard L.; Gilbert, David R.; Rogers, Jerry R. (eds.). Performance of Spillway Structures Using Hoover Dam Spillways as a Benchmark. Hoover Dam 75th Anniversary History Symposium. Las Vegas, Nevada: American Society of Civil Engineers. pp. 267-287. ISBN 978-0-7844-1141-4.

Glenn, Edward P.; Lee, Christopher; Felger, Richard; Zengel, Scott (August 1996). "Effects of Water Management on the Wetlands of the Colorado River Delta, Mexico". Conservation Biology. 10 (4): 1175-1186. Bibcode:1996ConBi..10.1175G. doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.1996.10041175.x. JSTOR 2387153.

Minckley, W. L.; Marsh, Paul C.; Deacon, James E.; Dowling, Thomas E.; Hedrick, Philip W.; Matthews, William J.; Mueller, Gordon (2003). "A Conservation Plan for Native Fishes of the Lower Colorado River". BioScience. 53 (3): 219-234. doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2003)053[0219:ACPFNF]2.0.CO;2. ISSN 0006-3568.

Rodriguez, C. A.; Flessa, K. W.; Téllez-Duarte, M. S.; Dettman, D. L.; Ávila-Serrano, G. A. (2001). "Macrofaunal and isotopic estimates of the former extent of the Colorado River estuary, upper Gulf of California, México" (PDF). Journal of Arid Environments. 49 (1): 183-193. Bibcode:2001JArEn..49..183R. doi:10.1006/jare.2001.0845.

Rogers, J. David (October 21-22, 2010). Wiltshire, Richard L.; Gilbert, David R.; Rogers, Jerry R. (eds.). Hoover Dam: Evolution of the Dam's Design. Hoover Dam 75th Anniversary History Symposium. Las Vegas, Nevada: American Society of Civil Engineers. pp. 85-123. ISBN 978-0-7844-1141-4.

Schmidt, John C.; Webb, Robert H.; Valdez, Richard A.; Marzolf, G. Richard; Stevens, Lawrence E. (September 1998). "Science and Values in River Restoration in the Grand Canyon". BioScience. 48 (9): 735-747. doi:10.2307/1313336. JSTOR 1313336.

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Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. Constructed between 1931 and 1936, during the Great Depression, it was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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Brayden Twist

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Bank Run - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of Bank Run, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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Spencer johnstone

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Cody Crocker

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Meet the Boxcar Children!

The Boxcar Children tells the story of four orphaned children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny. They create a home for themselves in an abandoned boxcar in the forest. They eventually meet their grandfather, who is a wealthy and kind man (although the children had believed him to be cruel). The children decide to live with the grandfather, who moves the beloved boxcar to his backyard so the children can use it as a playhouse.

Henry Alden

At age fourteen, Henry is the oldest in the Alden family. He likes to figure out how things work, which makes him good at repairing and building stuff. While he'll never brag, he's a great runner, too! It's not always easy being the oldest and having so much responsibility, but there's nothing that Henry can't handle.

Jessie Alden

Jessie is twelve. She can always be counted on to take charge in a situation. She's good at being organized-she makes lists in her notebook and always keeps track of facts when there's a mystery to be solved. When her younger siblings need help, Jessie's there. She loves planning adventures and taking care of Watch.

Violet Alden

Everyone knows ten-year-old Violet is creative-she loves to draw, take photos, and play the violin. She's a little on the shy side, but because she's quiet, she's a careful observer. With her artist's eye, Violet picks up on important details that her brothers and sister sometimes overlook. Can you guess her favorite color?

Benny Alden

Benny's only six, but just because he's the youngest Alden, it doesn't mean he can't help solve mysteries. He's always curious and full of questions. In fact, one of his favorite questions is "When's lunch?" because he's usually hungry! Benny loves playing with Watch and visiting new places.

Watch

Watch is the family dog, a friendly wirehaired fox terrier. Back when the children lived in an old boxcar in the woods, they found him as a stray. Since then, he has been loyal to the Aldens, especially Jessie, who once removed a thorn from his paw. Watch also has a special bond with Benny, who gives him treats.

Fun Stuff

Games, activities, downloadables, and more!

To celebrate the 75th Anniversary of The Boxcar Children®, Albert Whitman & Company and Hammerhead Productions are sponsoring a nationwide contest to select a child between the ages of 5 and 14 to win a part in the animated movie Surprise Island, which is set to launch in fall 2017.

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Meet the Boxcar Children | The Boxcar Children

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The Boxcar Children tells the story of four orphaned children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny. They create a home for themselves in an abandoned boxcar in the forest. They eventually meet their grandfather, who is a wealthy and kind man (although the children had believed him to be cruel).

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Shantytowns of the Depression (With Images)

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Shantytowns of the Depression (With Images)

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Riley White

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Homelessness was present before the Great Depression and a common sight before 1929. Most large cities built municipal lodging houses for them, but the depression exponentially increased demand. The homeless clustered in shanty towns close to free soup kitchens. A "Hooverville" was a shanty town built by homeless people during the Great Depression. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States during the onset of the Depression and widely blamed for it.

The Bonus Army, a group of World War I veterans seeking expedited benefits, established a Hooverville in Anacostia in the District of Columbia in 1932. At its maximum there were 15,000 people living there. The camp was demolished by units of the U.S. Army, commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

These settlements were often formed on empty land and generally consisted of tents and small shacks. Authorities did not officially recognize these Hoovervilles and occasionally removed the occupants for trespassing on private lands, but they were frequently tolerated or ignored out of necessity. The New Deal enacted special relief programs aimed at the homeless under the Federal Transient Service (FTS), which operated from 1933-35.

Some of the men who were forced to live in these conditions possessed construction skills and were able to build their houses out of stone. Most people, however, resorted to building their residences out of wood from crates, cardboard, scraps of metal, or whatever materials were available to them. They usually had a small stove, bedding and a couple of simple cooking implements.

By 1932 millions of people were living outside their homes and hundreds of thousands were living on the streets.

Most of these unemployed residents of the Hoovervilles used public charities or begged for food from those that had some housing during this era. They blamed President Hoover for this, and named the town after him. Democrats coined other terms, such as "Hoover blanket" (old newspaper used as blanketing) and "Hoover flag" (an empty pocket turned inside out). "Hoover leather" was cardboard used to line a shoe when the sole wore through. A "Hoover wagon" was an automobile with horses hitched to it because the owner could not afford fuel; in Canada, these were known as Bennett buggies, after the Prime Minister at the time.

After 1940 the economy recovered, unemployment fell, and shanty eradication programs destroyed all the Hoovervilles. Hoovervilles have often features in the popular culture, and still appear in editorial cartoons.Movies like My Man Godfrey (1936) and Sullivan's Travels (1941) sometimes sentimentalized Hooverville life

All photos : Library of Congress

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Life in Hooverville- Photos of inside the shanty towns of the Great Depression

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Homelessness was present before the Great Depression and a common sight before 1929. Most large cities built municipal lodging houses for them, but the depression exponentially increased demand. The homeless clustered in shanty towns close to free soup kitchens. A "Hooverville" was a shanty town built by homeless people during the Great Depression.

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Jessica Johnson

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Jessica Johnson

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Synopsis

During the Great Depression, Dorothea Lange photographed the unemployed men who wandered the streets. Her photographs of migrant workers were often presented with captions featuring the words of the workers themselves. Lange's first exhibition, held in 1934, established her reputation as a skilled documentary photographer. In 1940, she received the Guggenheim Fellowship.

Early Years

One of the preeminent and pioneering documentary photographers of the 20th century, Dorothea Lange was born Dorothea Nutzhorn on May 26, 1895, in Hoboken, New Jersey. Her father, Heinrich Nutzhorn, was a lawyer, and her mother, Johanna, stayed at home to raise Dorothea and her brother, Martin.

When she was 7, Dorothea contracted polio, which left her right leg and foot noticeably weakened. Later, however, she'd feel almost appreciative of the effects the illness had on her life. "[It] was the most important thing that happened to me, and formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me," she said.

Just before Dorothea reached her teen years, her parents divorced. Dorothea grew to blame the separation on her father and eventually dropped his surname and took her mother's maiden name, Lange, as her own.

Art and literature were big parts of Lange's upbringing. Her parents were both strong advocates for her education, and exposure to creative works filled her childhood.

Following high school, she attended the New York Training School for Teachers in 1913. Lange, who'd never shown much interest in academics, decided to pursue photography as a profession after a stint working in a NYC photo studio. She went on to study the art form at Columbia University, and then, over the next several years, cut her teeth as an apprentice, working for several different photographers, including Arnold Genthe, a leading portrait photographer. In 1917, she also studied with Clarence Hudson White at his prestigious school of photography.

By 1918, Lange was living in San Francisco and soon running a successful portrait studio. With her husband, muralist Maynard Dixon, she had two sons and settled into the comfortable middle-class life she'd known as a child.

Change of Focus

Lange's first real taste of documentary photography came in the 1920s when she traveled around the Southwest with Dixon, mostly photographing Native Americans. With the onslaught of the Great Depression in the 1930s, she trained her camera on what she started to see in her own San Francisco neighborhoods: labor strikes and breadlines.

In the early 1930s, Lange, mired in an unhappy marriage, met Paul Taylor, a university professor and labor economist. Their attraction was immediate, and by 1935, both had left their respective spouses to be with each other.

Over the next five years, the couple traveled extensively together, documenting the rural hardship they encountered for the Farm Security Administration, established by the U.S. Agriculture Department. Taylor wrote reports, and Lange photographed the people they met. This body of work included Lange's most well-known portrait, "Migrant Mother," an iconic image from this period that gently and beautifully captured the hardship and pain of what so many Americans were experiencing. The work now hangs in the Library of Congress.

As Taylor would later note, Lange's access to the inner lives of these struggling Americans was the result of patience and careful consideration of the people she photographed. "Her method of work," Taylor later said, "was often to just saunter up to the people and look around, and then when she saw something that she wanted to photograph, to quietly take her camera, look at it, and if she saw that they objected, why, she would close it up and not take a photograph, or perhaps she would wait until... they were used to her."

In 1940, Lange became the first woman awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.

Final Years

Following America's entrance into World War II, Lange was hired by the Office of War Information (OWI) to photograph the internment of Japanese Americans. In 1945, she was employed again by the OWI, this time to document the San Francisco conference that created the United Nations.

While she battled increasing health problems over the last two decades of her life, Lange stayed active. She co-founded Aperture, a small publishing house that produces a periodical and high-end photography books. She took on assignments for Life magazine, traveling through Utah, Ireland and Death Valley. She also accompanied her husband on his work-related assignments in Pakistan, Korea and Vietnam, among other places, documenting what she saw along the way.

Lange passed away from esophageal cancer in October 1965.

While Lange sometimes grew frustrated that her work didn't always provoke society to correct the injustices she documented, her photography has endured and greatly influenced generations of documentary photographers.

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During the Great Depression, Dorothea Lange photographed the unemployed men who wandered the streets. Her photographs of migrant workers were often presented with captions featuring the words of the workers themselves. Lange's first exhibition, held in 1934, established her reputation as a skilled documentary photographer. In 1940, she received the Guggenheim Fellowship.