Families often lived in tar-paper shacks with no floor or plumbing. By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Dust Bowl states toward the Pacific states.
How did families live during the Dust Bowl?
Bob Burke: Children had to stay inside if a dust storm was coming. If they went outside to do chores, they had to hold a cloth over their nose. It was commonplace for adults and children to wear homemade masks. There were stories of animals and humans suffocating to death when they were caught in a thick dust storm.
How did people survive the dust bowls?
In 1932, the weather bureau reported 14 dust storms. The next year, the number climbed to 38. People tried to protect themselves by hanging wet sheets in front of doorways and windows to filter the dirt. They stuffed window frames with gummed tape and rags.
What did many farm families do to escape the Dust Bowl?
As roadside camps of poverty-stricken migrants proliferated, growers pressured sheriffs to break them up. Groups of vigilantes beat up migrants, accusing them of being Communists, and burned their shacks to the ground.
Where did families go during the Dust Bowl?
Driven by the depression, drought, and the Dust Bowl, thousands upon thousands left their homes in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Over 300,000 of them came to California. They looked to California as a land of promise. Not since the Gold Rush had so many people traveled in such large numbers to the state.
How many families were affected by the Dust Bowl?
The drought and dust storms left an estimated 500,000 people homeless, and an estimated 2.5 million people moved out of the Dust Bowl states. The people moved to Arizona, Washington and Oregon. Approximately 200,000 people moved to California.
How were children affected during the Dust Bowl?
All the kids suffered from redness irritated eyes from all the dirt flying around. Dust gathered in people’s bodies (especially in their lungs) over time, often leading to a disease called dust pneumonia. Kids were forced to wear masks and they couldn’t go to school.
Did anyone survive the Dust Bowl?
J.R. Davison recalls his experience growing up in Texhoma, Oklahoma during The Dust Bowl. I think the land was good to these people, because it provided ’em with a — I don’t know whether I should say a “good living.” It wasn’t a good living as we would judge it now, but it was an existence.
Did people go crazy during the Dust Bowl?
It was debilitating,” he says. “Some people said the only place clean when you woke up after a dust storm in the night was the place underneath your head on the pillow,” adds Burns. “Mothers would go crazy, commit suicide trying to keep their house clean or their children protected.
How did Oklahoma recover from the Dust Bowl?
Grasses were replanted; shelter belts of trees were planted to slow the persistent winds; contour farming or terracing was used to farm in line with the natural shape of the land; strip cropping was used to leave some protective cover on the soil; and crop rotations and fallow periods allowed the land to rest.
Why did so many families migrate from the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl era?
Why did so many families migrate from the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl era? Geographic factors made it difficult to farm successfully.
How did a large part of the general public try to escape the hardships of their lives during the Great Depression?
Attending movies, listening to the radio, dancing to live music, and reading cheap magazines or books containing sensational or gruesome material, popularly known as pulp fiction, allowed people to escape from the uncertainties, anxieties, and loss of self esteem associated with the Depression years.
What were the Dust Bowl refugees called?
Okies
Although the Dust Bowl included many Great Plains states, the migrants were generically known as “Okies,” referring to the approximately 20 percent who were from Oklahoma. The migrants represented in Voices from the Dust Bowl came primarily from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri.
Where did people migrate to after the Dust Bowl?
In the 1930s, farmers from the Midwestern Dust Bowl states, especially Oklahoma and Arkansas, began to move to California; 250,000 arrived by 1940, including a third who moved into the San Joaquin Valley, which had a 1930 population of 540,000. During the 1930s, some 2.5 million people left the Plains states.
How were the Okies treated in California?
Once the Okie families migrated from Oklahoma to California, they often were forced to work on large farms to support their families. Because of the minimal pay, these families were often forced to live on the outskirts of these farms in shanty houses they built themselves.
What was life like during the Dust Bowl?
Despite all the dust and the wind, we were putting in crops, but making no crops and barely living out of barnyard products only. We made five crop failures in five years.” Life during the Dust Bowl years was a challenge for those who remained on the Plains. They battled constantly to keep the dust out of their homes.
Where did Okies go?
“Okies,” as Californians labeled them, were refugee farm families from the Southern Plains who migrated to California in the 1930s to escape the ruin of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
What was family life like in the 1930s?
Having Fun – Family Life during the Great Depression. When they weren’t working, families found time to have fun, with neighbors, friends, relatives and each other. With little money to spend on entertainment, families enjoyed new board games such as “Monopoly” and “Scrabble” which were first sold during the 1930s.
How did families survive the Great Depression?
To save money, families neglected medical and dental care. Many families sought to cope by planting gardens, canning food, buying used bread, and using cardboard and cotton for shoe soles. Despite a steep decline in food prices, many families did without milk or meat.
What did they do to protect themselves from the dust storms?
People tried to protect themselves by hanging wet sheets in front of doorways and windows to filter the dirt. They stuffed window frames with gummed tape and rags.
How much money was lost from the Dust Bowl?
The Dust Bowl forced tens of thousands of poverty-stricken families, who were unable to pay mortgages or grow crops, to abandon their farms, and losses reached $25 million per day by 1936 (equivalent to $490 million in 2021).
