1930s Dust Bowl

The devastation of the Great Plains during the 1930's

Throughout the 1930's, the Great Plains states of the U.S. (mainly Texas & Oklahoma, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas) as well as Canada experienced an historically unprecedented dust bowl. It was created by poor farming methods that essentially stripped the top layer of soil. This forced tens of thousands of people to abandon their farms, many of them moving to California. These are the pictures of their lands and times.