Depression-era dust storms
Left: A Depression-era dust storm in Baca County, Colo., photographed by D.L. Kernodle.
Decades of poor farming practices had severely depleted the soil in the nation's mid-section by the early 1930s. Add chronic drought conditions -- and much of the nation's breadbasket was transformed into a Dust Bowl.
But the conditions of the Dust Bowl weren't limited to the Plains States.
Kansas
The stories of personal hardships of that time are still familiar to many of us, in part because of the iconic images captured by photographers.
Left: A dust storm hits Elkhart, Kansas, in May 1937.
Texas
Visibility drops during a dust storm in Amarillo, Texas, April 1936. Photographed by Arthur Rothstein.
South Dakota
Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Kansas
Texas
Texas
Colorado
North Dakota
North Dakota
Kitchen windows are sealed up with towels to protect against dust storms, in Williams County, N.D., October 1937. Photographed by Russell Lee.
Colorado
Colorado
A dust storm in Baca County, Colo., 1935. Photographed by J.H. Ward.
Florida
Left: The beginnings of a dust storm in northern Florida, March 1939. Photographed by Marion Post Wolcott.
Prevailing west-to-east winds occasionally brought tons of dust a thousand miles or more, to the Eastern Seaboard. On May 11, 1934, the airport in Pittsburgh reported dust so thick that visibility was reduced to one mile. For five hours, New York City was blanketed by dust, obscuring the city. The New York Times described "a half-light similar to the light cast by the sun in a partial eclipse."
New Mexico
