California Dust Bowl

There is much talk lately about California's drought, now entering its fourth year.  Farm yields are declining, and a number of small towns that depend on well water face the possibility that their wells will run dry.

It is interesting to me that many people migrated from the Midwest  to California in the 1930s because an earlier drought had ravaged Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas.  

That drought began around 1930, as the Depression was developing, and continued until late in the decade in the prairies of the U.S. and Canada. 

The drought was an act of God, but the dust storms that gave the Dust Bowl its name were caused in part by farming practices.  Farmers pulled native prairie grasses to plant crops in the treeless landscape.  When no rains came, the newly planted crops -- chiefly wheat and cotton -- didn't develop the root systems needed to hold the earth in place.  The result was that any wind carried soil, sometimes across many states and as far as the East Coast. 

A dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas

On a chat board, I found one man's recollections of what his mother, a teenager in Oklahoma at the time, told him of those years.

     "The dust was so fine that it was impossible to prevent it from getting into your house.
     They would soak blankets, sheets, tablecloths, towels, and even their clothes so they could
     hang them over the windows, doors, and fill any cracks where the dust may enter the house.
     This had to be done at least once a day and sometimes the blankets and sheets covering
     the windows and doors had to be wetted and rehung twice a day or more often.

     "The dust was so fine it would get past the seals of the refrigerator doors and coat everything
     in fine dust.

     "She told me that on the days the dust storms were 'thick' you would not eat until the storm
     abated.  Sometimes the storms would last for several days.  The reason you didn't eat was that
     you could not cook because the dust would get into the food so it was like eating plain dirt."

Some people developed dust pneumonia when too much of the blowing soil found its way into their lungs.  Some people actually starved.

During and after the drought years, new farming practices were adopted in many prairie states, including the planting of trees and grasses and the rotation of crops.

A farm abandoned in Oklahoma

Migration to California

The lack of rainfall rendered farmers unable to feed their families.  Between 1931 and 1933, 10 percent of all Oklahoma farms were foreclosed, a process that continued through the decade. Thousands of farms were abandoned, and by 1940 an estimated 400,000 people had left, mostly for California, vastly accelerating a westward migration that had begun 20 years earlier.

Between 1930 and 1940, the populations of Kansas and Nebraska actually declined, an unheard-of circumstance in a country that had done nothing but grow as immigrants arrived and children were born into the traditionally larger families of that period.  The population of the Oklahoma and Texas panhandle regions dropped by an estimated 25 percent.

Unfortunately, California offered little hope.  Los Angeles unemployment ranged above 30 percent in the 1930s.  Indigent immigrants, dubbed "Okies," were scorned.  Those with skills were seen as threats to local workers.  Those who sought farm work competed with Mexican laborers and drove down wages; in addition, large farm operators feared the anglo Okies would organize labor unions and raise production costs.

For a period in 1936, the Los Angeles police department established a "bum blockade" to turn back poor immigrants at entry points on California's borders with Oregon, Arizona and Nevada.  The California legislature passed a law in 1939 banning the bringing of indigent people into the state.  The law, clearly unconstitutional, was struck down two years later by the U.S. Supreme Court.

By that time, the tensions had ameliorated.  In preparation for war, the U.S. government had invested in munitions factories, shipbuilding and the manufacture of planes and tanks.  Jobs became more plentiful. The worst was over.

The Dust Bowl and Art in California

The photograph at the right is one of the most famous in American history.  Titled "Destitute Pea Pickers in California," it was shot in 1936 by Dorothea Lange, who was hired by the U.S. Farm Security Administration to take pictures of farm workers in the Depression.  The woman in the picture, 32 years old and the mother of seven, had come with her family from the Midwest to California during the Dust Bowl period.

Another work is The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, who drew on his California newspaper reporting to write his novel about an Oklahoma family, broke and hungry, who journeyed to California in a frustrating and often unsuccessful search for work to support themselves.  The book showed America an unflattering picture of its treatment of poor white people and over the generations led to the recognition of rural poverty among all groups.


Future Drought

The current California drought does not seem likely to end soon.  It probably will not destroy as many lives or lead to family relocations as desperate as those of the Depression.  But it should challenge the state and the country to think about water and to plan for droughts, including droughts that could last for years at a time.  We should remember the pain of the Dust Bowl to be sure that it will not be repeated.