Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930sIn the mid 1930s, North America's Great Plains faced one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in world history. Donald Worster's classic chronicle of the devastating years between 1929 and 1939 tells the story of the Dust Bowl in ecological as well as human terms. Now, twenty-five years after his book helped to define the new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it. In a new afterword, he links the Dust Bowl to current political, economic and ecological issues--including the American livestock industry's exploitation of the Great Plains, and the on-going problem of desertification, which has now become a global phenomenon. He reflects on the state of the plains today and the threat of a new dustbowl. He outlines some solutions that have been proposed, such as "the Buffalo Commons," where deer, antelope, bison and elk would once more roam freely, and suggests that we may yet witness a Great Plains where native flora and fauna flourish while applied ecologists show farmers how to raise food on land modeled after the natural prairies that once existed. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 3 |
A DARKLING PLAIN | 9 |
The Black Blizzards Roll In | 10 |
If It Rains | 26 |
Okies and Exodusters | 44 |
PRELUDE TO DUST | 65 |
What Holds the Earth Together | 66 |
Sodbusting | 80 |
Unsettled Ground | 140 |
The Wheat Farmer and the Welfare State | 148 |
A Sense of Place | 164 |
A NEW DEAL FOR THE LAND | 180 |
Facing up to Limits | 180 |
Learning from Nature | 198 |
Make Two Blades of Grass Grow | 210 |
ON A THIN EDGE | 231 |
CIMARRON COUNTY OKLAHOMA | 99 |
Frontier in Ruins | 100 |
When the Cattle Ate Tumbleweeds | 108 |
Hard Times in the Panhandle | 118 |
HASKELL COUNTY KANSAS | 139 |
AFTERWORD | 244 |
NOTES | 255 |
INDEX | 283 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
agriculture Amarillo American Archives RG 114 average began black blizzards blow Boise City bushels capitalism cattle cent Cimarron County Colorado commercial county's crop culture Dalhart decade Depression desert dirt Dorothea Lange drought Dust Bowl dust storms Earl Bell earth ecological ecologists economic environmental exodusters farm federal Finnell Grapes of Wrath grass grassland harvest Haskell County Haskell's High Plains irrigation John John Steinbeck labor land land-use living Migration million acres National Archives RG nature Nebraska needed never Okies panhandle plainsmen plant plow population prairie problem production rain ranch ranchers region relief Report residents Rexford Tugwell Roosevelt rural Satanta Sears Sept shelterbelts social Southern Great Plains southern plains Steinbeck Sublette taped interview Taylor Texas thirties tion town tractors Tugwell University Press USDA Washington West Western wheat wind erosion Woody Guthrie York