Setting the Stage THE OKLAHOMA OKLAHOMA SUN Sunday Issue 5 Families Flee As Another Dust Storm Blankets The Midwest Many Run Volume 12 July 12th 1935 At least three million families have fled their homes and farms on the Great Plains during what has been called the worst worldwide worldwide environmental environmental environmental disaster of the twentieth twentieth century The 1930s drought has forced many families to migrate to the West and to other states in search of food and fresh water This environmental environmental disaster is a result of a lack of precipitation precipitation and poor farming caused the soil to become dry and practices airborne Clearly the Midwest has become an uninhabitable dust 4 bowl which have
This Texas town looks like a ghost town as a wall of dust approaches during a dust storm in 1935 From the period of 1930 to 1939 dust storms devastated large parts of Kansas Oklahoma Texas Colorado and New Mexico The areas affected by the dust storms became known as the Dust Bowl Huge rolling walls of dust forced hundreds of thousands of families to hurriedly pack their belongings leaving their homes and farms behind to be buried under a blanket of dust 5
Surviving the Dust Bowl We’ve really tried to outlast this brown blizzard but Today is July 10 1935 The drought and high-speed winds continue here in Oklahoma and across the Central States There is still no relief in sight If you don’t want that I’ll eat it I'm I’ll eat my potato but NOT eating the grasshopper You two have the last potatoes from the bin EWW There’s a grasshopper on my potato 6
After the children are in bed Mary the riverbed has been dry now for about 32 months I think it’s time to leave Really I think the Smiths are heading out soon Maybe we can travel with them I’ll talk with Harry tomorrow Thank you Thank you 7
