The Dust Bowl

Dale Coen reads a poem he thinks his mother wrote.

The stock market crashed on what came to be called Black Tuesday. In response to the lower wheat prices more wheat was planted.

Sanora Babb, an author, poet, editor and journalist, joins the Farm Security Administration to help refugees.

In the summer of 1936, Roosevelt takes a whistle-stop tour across the Midwest and Northern Plains to see the crisis himself. He inspires enthusiastic, but weary, audiences. At the same time, Hugh Bennett, head of the Soil Conservation Service, begins instituting his program of agricultural reform and offering incentives to those farmers who will adopt the new farming methods.

Calvin Crabill talks about how his father drove a tractor at night to try to get ahead.

Howard Finnell introduced farmers to new farming techniques.

Some of the people who went to CA got jobs giving them a fresh start.

Trixie Travis Brown Talks About Housekeeping.

The Coens talk about how they ended up in the southern Great Plains.

Survey the causes of the worst man-made ecological disaster in U.S. history: the catastrophic dust storms of the 1930s.

Robert Boots McCoy talks about burning cow chips.

The Great Plains goes through a boom period as land speculators tout the miraculous advantages of farming wheat. Government and private industry encourage the settlement and development of the region.