On April 14 , 1935 , the residents of Dodge City , Kansas , were savour a rare respite from the detritus storms that had chafe for years . The forenoon aviation was still , the sun was fall against a study of drear — but that good afternoon , the sky vanish .
Thirteen - year - oldHarley Holladaywas bring in the kinsperson laundry when the storm struck . “ I could n’t see anything at all . It was black as dark . I get down on my hands and knees and hear to crawl toward the family , ” he remembered . “ I finally experience the porch and reached up and opened the screen door and crawled in spite of appearance . ”
A sinister paries of detritus surged around Harley ’s home and many others in Dodge City , a Ithiel Town of 10,000 people on the huge plain of southwesterly Kansas . propel by a stale front from the north , the cloud erase the sun and dropped visibility to zero within minutes as winds scream across southern Nebraska , Kansas , eastern Colorado and New Mexico , Oklahoma , and Texas .
The Dodge City office of the National Weather Servicerecordedthe apocalyptical scene . Some residents saw hundred of geese and ducks flying ahead of the dust swarm before wickedness fell in an instant . Others stumbled through the twiddle grit and later complain of “ dust pneumonia , ” their lung kick the bucket with filth . “ The onrushing cloud , the dark , and the thick , choking dirt , made this storm one of terror and the worst , while it go , ever know here , ” the bureau ’s logarithm report .
finally dubbed Black Sunday , the April 14 effect was n’t the first dust tempest to blanket the plains . In fact , Dodge City had just lived through a train of smaller storms that impart the street coated in several inches of fine dirt . But Black Sunday marked the most devastating rubble storm in American story , putting Harley and hundreds of thousands of others throughout the Great Plains at the nitty-gritty of one of the worst ecologic calamity ever experience — theDust Bowl .
The Dirty Thirties
The events lead to the Dust Bowl started with theHomestead Act of 1862 . The Union legislating give 160 landed estate of public land to any adult who was willing to populate on and civilise that property for five years , after which clip they would de jure own it . By 1904 , the regime had distributed500 million acresto farmers , ranchers , miners , loggers , and railroad companies .
But the new settler were mostly unfamiliar with the plains ’ soil and mood . They plow up vast swaths of native prairie antecedently stabilized by mysterious - rooted grasses . Then came the rise of mechanized land tools , such as tractor , and tempestuous swings in the price of pale yellow that led to the cultivation of even larger nerve tract of land in the 1920s . Without right nation direction drill to fill again the soil from season to season , its critical nutrients were clean in just a few years .
Finally , austere drought set in by the former 1930s , rendering35 million acresof land useless for agriculture while surface soil eroded from another 125 million acres .
“Black Blizzards”
While dust storms were n’t new in the area , their relative frequency increased , from 14 storm in 1932 to 28 the following class . They also grew more vivid without chummy craw or aboriginal grasses to anchor the ground , causing “ blackened blizzards ” of dust to roll across the plains . Over a period of two days in 1934 , winds carried about350 million tons of dirteastward . ship sitting 300 knot out in the Atlantic see Oklahoma ’s dust coating their decks .
Then come Black Sunday .
On that April day , wind start sweeping across the plain stitch at100 Admiralty mile per 60 minutes , surpassinghurricane - forcelevels . A cold front clash with lovesome zephyr , start the swirling storm of dust , which towered more than 10,000 feet high and blow through a belt of the Great Plains 800 miles long and 300 to 500 geographical mile wide . Then-11 - year - old Imogene Glover later recalled , “ The dust was just like face powder . It was so heavy and thick . It was n’t like sand … it was veridical dark , almost black ” [ PDF ] . It was so deep people could not see hands in front of faces or electric-light bulb inches by .
Families fought to keep the dust out of their homes by stuff fuddled towels under door and over windows . But the silt ooze in anyway — through every crack , settling over nutrient , furniture , and clothing — with hoi polloi covering their face with rags . The storm lasted for several hours , suffocating cattle in pasture as chickens huddled in chicken coop and birds in flight fall from the skies . Wells became choked with mud . According to theLubbock Avalanche - Journal , one of the most frightening features of Black Sunday was thestatic electrical energy , induce light and electrical exponent to stutter .
resident finally emerged from dust - buried homes to tax the impairment . Farms had fly and construction had break down under dunes of crap . The air remained thick , with wretched air lineament persisting for Day , exacerbating health offspring and economic damage . Though the estimates of verbatim human death vary , some suggested dust pneumonia took century of lives . The financial impairment was impossible to tally .
From Black Sunday to the Dust Bowl
It ’s unclear how the phraseBlack Sundayarose , but it was likelycoined by journalistsaround the same time as the populace began hear about the “ Dust Bowl . ” Struggling to describe the scene in Boise City , Oklahoma , on April 14 , 1935 , Associated Press reporterRobert E. Geigerwrote that “ occupier of the southwesterly dust trough marked up another pitch-black duster today . ” Subsequent press stories cementedDust Bowlas a idiomatic expression synonymous with the dust storms of the 1930s as well as the devastated stretching of the Great Plains .
Black Sunday alone was such a substantial storm that lawgiver in Washington , D.C. bulge out compensate aid , leading to significant change in the administration ’s approach to landed estate management . PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt ’s organisation , hard at work on the New Deal , prioritized conservation programs . The Soil Conservation Service and several other feat were set up to teach Farmer soil - preserve practices , including harvest rotation and the enjoyment ofshelterbelts(planting tree diagram or bush to serve as windbreaks ) .
But even with Union efforts underway , the Dust Bowl continued over the residual of the decade .
More than a half - million people were result roofless by farm they could n’t use or from foreclosure related to theGreat Depression . As many as2.5 million peoplemoved Mae West by 1940 . The majority migrated toward California , where many expected a fresh start , but they were n’t welcome : masses called them by the pejorative termOkie(regardless of their origin ) and handle them with hostility and prejudice .
Dorothea Lange’sMigrant Mother , her celebrated portrayal ofFlorence Owens Thompsontaken in 1936 , come to represent the struggle of those move by the Dust Bowl . Thompson was one of many who leave Oklahoma to relocate in California . Only 32 years old and surrounded by her children , Thompson ’s weary , tire look became a face of the crisis that further influenced politics action .
Ultimately , Black Sunday helped enkindle widespread understanding of the human - madeenvironmentalcrisis that had been unfolding for years — and serve as a admonisher of the cost of ignoring nature ’s ability .
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