The Dust Bowl is the Depression-era name given to the drought-affected Great Plains region in the center of North America, stretching from Texas to Alberta. The period was characterized by huge storms of wind-eroded soil that led to the deaths of people, livestock and crops.
The Dust Bowl resulted from several factors. To meet the rising demand for wheat in the 1910s and 1920s, and to expand settler populations further west, government incentives encouraged wheat cultivatation in the historically arid Great Plains land. With the Great Depression came plummeting wheat prices, leading farmers to rip up the deep-rooted prairie grasses to create more wheat fields in an attempt to yield bumper crops that could make up for the drop in wheat's value. Historically low rainfall in 1930, coupled with the removal of prairie grasses that would have held the soil in place, led to wind erosion and dust storms.
Over the decade, topsoil loss rendered tens of millions of acres of farmland useless. Thousands of people migrated in search of work and better living conditions. The Dust Bowl period didn't end until reliable rainfall returned in 1939. However, the effects of the economic devastation lasted until the postwar economic boom of the 1950s.
