Using the Library of Congress to Advantage to Study

The Dust Bowl Era

Caleb Waddell, Grace Jayjack-Ortega, Amie Mullane, Zach Stein,
Brandy Offenback, Michael Vroman, Gabbi Franco, & Sean Kelleher

The Dust Bowl or the Dirty Thirties was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). This catastrophe intensified the economic impact of the Great Depression throughout the region.

A great human disaster caused by misuse of land and years of sustained drought, millions of acres of farmland became useless forcing hundreds of thousands of people to abandon their homes. The mass exodus of families traveled west towards California, where they found economic conditions slightly better than those they had left.