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The Beginning
Severe drought hits the Midwestern and Southern Plains. As the crops die, the “black blizzards” begin. Dust from the over-plowed and over-grazed land begins to blow. -
Shutdown
When Franklin Roosevelt takes office, the country is in desperate straits. He will take quick steps to declare a four-day bank holiday, during which time Congress will come up with the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, which stabilizes the banking industry and restores people’s faith in the banking system by putting the federal government behind it. -
Setting up Camp
The Civilian Conservation Corps opens the first soil erosion control camp in Clayton County, Alabama. By September there will be 161 soil erosion camps. -
Farming
In California’s San Joaquin Valley, where many farmers fleeing the plains have gone seeking migrant farm work, the largest agricultural strike in America’s history begins. More than 18,000 cotton workers with the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union strike for 24 days. During the strike, two men and one woman are killed and hundreds injured. In the settlement, the union is recognized by growers, and workers are given a 25 percent raise. -
Taylor Grazing Act
Roosevelt signs the Taylor Grazing Act, which allows him to take up to 140 million acres of federally-owned land out of the public domain and establish grazing districts that will be carefully monitored. One of many New Deal efforts to heal the damage done to the land by overuse, the program is able to arrest the deterioration but cannot undo the damage that has already been done. -
Destroyed Crops
The “Yearbook of Agriculture” for 1934 announces, “Approximately 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production…. 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil….” -
Emergency Relief
FDR approves the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, which provides $525 million for drought relief, and authorizes creation of the Works Progress Administration, which will employ 8.5 million people. -
Soil Conservation Service
Congress declares soil erosion “a national menace” in an act establishing the Soil Conservation Service in the Department of Agriculture -
Roosevelt
Roosevelt addresses the nation in his second inaugural address -
Ending
In the fall the rain comes finally bringing an end to the drought. During the next few years, with the coming of World War II, the country is pulled out of the Depression and the plains once again become golden with wheat