The Dust Bowls years, between 1930 and the Second World War, were some of the most difficult years American ever experienced. Those years, coupled with the stock market crash of 1929 mark a shocking and life changing event for Americans. An event that dragged on, day after day, for a decade, in some cases ending live but in all cases changing lives.
The life-giving environment became an unrelenting enemy. Nature turned, previously generous and heathy farmlands, to dust. Large sections of the country became hills and valleys of choking dust and abandon farms. Bountiful farmland became swirling, chocking deserts. Previously cool balmy evenings on the prairie turned to hellish nights of blowing dust, howling wind and little hope.
Prayer meetings for deliverance went unanswered and banks took the farms. The only escape was westward from places like Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Almost 2.5 million people left the dust for the promise of job and a livelihood picking cotton or fruit in the California fields.
At the California border, State Police tried to stop the Okies. You didn’t have to be from Oklahoma to be called an Okie, you just had to be poor and on the move. There were a lot of Okies in the 1930’s
The Dust Bowls years, between 1930 and the Second World War, were some of the most difficult years American ever experienced. Those years, coupled with the stock market crash of 1929 mark a shocking and life changing event for Americans. An event that dragged on, day after day, for a decade, in some cases ending live but in all cases changing lives.
The life-giving environment became an unrelenting enemy. Nature turned, previously generous and heathy farmlands, to dust. Large sections of the country became hills and valleys of choking dust and abandon farms. Bountiful farmland became swirling, chocking deserts. Previously cool balmy evenings on the prairie turned to hellish nights of blowing dust, howling wind and little hope.
Prayer meetings for deliverance went unanswered and banks took the farms. The only escape was westward from places like Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Almost 2.5 million people left the dust for the promise of job and a livelihood picking cotton or fruit in the California fields.
At the California border, State Police tried to stop the Okies. You didn’t have to be from Oklahoma to be called an Okie, you just had to be poor and on the move. There were a lot of Okies in the 1930’s
