Environmental Catastrophe

The Dust Bowl was a decade-long natural catastrophe of biblical proportions, and the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history. It is the classic tale of humans pushing too hard on nature and nature pushing back, during a period of economic boom and bust in the 1920s and 1930s. Learning Objective: Students will understand what the Dust Bowl was and how the crisis was a man-made creation.

As the Great Depression took hold, farmers on the Great Plains began to feel its effects. A combination of natural and man-made factors turned profitable farming land into a vast wasteland.  Learning Objective: Students will understand the effects of natural and man-made conditions on the Great Plains population.

The Dust Bowl was a region of the Southwestern Great Plains of the United States that experienced crippling drought throughout the 1930s, coupled with high winds and soil erosion from years of aggressive and ill-conceived farming practices that upset the ecology of the prairie. The dust storms created from this mix of drought, poor soil, and high winds were so severe they blackened out the sun, choked people and cattle, and drove thousands of families from their homes. In the activities contained within this media gallery, students will view and examine primary-source images from the time period, screen a video segment, and close-read an essay as they analyze the origins of the Dust Bowl and the government's response. Learning Objectives Students will: Understand and analyze how the Dust Bowl began in America; Analyze the government’s response to the Dust Bowl.

The Dust Bowl was the greatest man-made ecological disaster in the history of the United States. It encompassed a region 150,000 square miles long, across Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandles, and parts of Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico. A combination of aggressive and poor farming techniques, coupled with drought conditions in the region and high winds created massive dust storms that drove thousands from their homes and created a large migrant population of poor, rural Americans during the 1930s.  In the activities contained within this media gallery, students will screen a short clip from the film, "The Dust Bowl," view primary source images, and create a newspaper article detailing the events of Black Sunday. Learning Objective Students will analyze the effects of natural and man-made conditions on the Great Plains population.

Hear Woody Guthrie sing, "The Great Dust Storm," as historians and survivors talk about the conditions of living in the Dust Bowl during the Depression.

In this lesson, students will research and produce their own narrative that describes an environmental event, either recent or in the past, in their local community.