You might think a book about the people who lived through the 1930’s in the Dust Bowl would be rather, well, dry (sorry, couldn’t help myself), but Timothy Egan manages to bring the era to life. He tells the story not just through research at local museums and contemporary newspaper articles, but through interviewing people who actually lived through the era. He manages to blend details about the number of acres of sod plowed under and rainfall rates with the pathos these numbers engendered for the people who remained in western Kansas, eastern Colorado, and the Oklahoma & Texas panhandles during the worst environmental disaster that part of the country had ever seen.
He starts by explaining how & why people started living in the part of this country to begin with, since it had been thought of as only good for buffalo, or maybe cattle. But in the early 1900’s, people decided to try to plow up the Great American Desert, and grow crops, mostly wheat. They were encouraged by a homestead act promoted by railroad companies, who were hoping that “No Man’s Land” could be settled, and even be made into profitable farmland. It worked, for a while, until a drought that the prairie could have withstood, hit hard in the areas where the sod had been busted. The resulting dust storms lasted the better part of the decade, overlapping the Great Depression.
The people who stayed throughout the “dirty Thirties” had many reasons. Some were stubborn; some had little other choice. Egan’s book tells their stories, as well as others who were impacted by the dust storms, a couple of which even made it all the way to the East Coast. There was actually a documentary made in 1936 about the Dust Bowl, called The Plow That Broke the Plains. It is in the National Film Registry, and you should also be able to find in on YouTube. One of the people profiled in The Worst Hard Time, a man named Bam White, is shown demonstrating how plowing up the sod was done.
If you had family living in this area in the 1930’s, this book will give you a glimpse of what they lived through. My family lived east of the worst hit areas, in eastern Oklahoma and southwest Missouri, but they must have been aware of what was happening. I’m sure they must have read the papers or listened to the news on the radio, and probably saw at least the edges of a few dust storms. But they never talked about it. Granted, they were busy trying to survive the Depression themselves at that time.
If this was your family, how would you research them? At the risk of being too obvious, land records would be a great place to start. If your family lived in this area, and owned property, when did they move there? Were they homesteaders? A number of people, especially children and the elderly, died of dust pneumonia. Check the death certificates of relatives who died in the 1930’s in the Dust Bowl for cause of death. Some farmers in the area, between the dual effects of the drought and the Depression, went bankrupt. They would have filed under the Bankruptcy Act of 1898, and the records are held at the National Archives in Kansas City. The website is www.archives.gov. You probably won’t be able to access the information online, but there is information on the website to help you find the records. Of course, as usual, local newspapers, museums, and historical societies may also have helpful information.