Dust Bowl Refugees

A Great Environmental Disaster

During the 1930s, a severe drought coupled with unsustainable farming practices, resulted in a devastating collapse of farming in the American midwest. The period came to be known as the Dust Bowl or the Dirty Thirties because of the vast amount of soil that was blown up into the air, coating everything with dust; the name was also a metaphor for the poverty and squalor that befell the inhabitants of the region.

Many farmers and rural dwellers abandoned their homes and farms, overwhelmed by literally mountains if dust that covered their barren fields and buried houses and farm animals. The lucky ones who had cars drove out west, to California, looking for a better life.

Here you can see four families and 15 children, as they try to escape from the dustbowl in Texas, stopping for a rest at a roadside camp in California.

The good life eluded most of these American refugees, as they were forced into improvised camps and often had to live with their entire families in makeshift shelters like the one below. This is tragic episode in American history that hopefully will never be repeated.