Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

152
each person in the city. The next day Buffalo, in eastern upstate New York,
fell dark at noon. By dawn on May 11 dust was settling on New York City,
Boston, and Washington. The huge brown cloud could be seen far out in
the Atlantic Ocean.
Resilient when under permanent vegetation, grazed (and manured) by
millions of buffalo, the prairie fell apart when plowed up and dried out by
prolonged drought. Without the grasses and their roots that stabilized the
soil, winds that decades before blew harmlessly across the range ripped the
countryside open like a sand-charged hurricane. Shifting drifts of dirt covered
a vast region where high winds carried off desiccated soil exposed
beneath the parched stubble of wilted crops. High winds stirred up enough
dust to choke people, shred crops, kill livestock, and shroud distant New
York City in an eerie veil.
The National Resources Board reported that by the end of 1934, dust
storms had destroyed an area larger than the state of Virginia. Another
hundred million acres were severely degraded.
In the spring of 1935 strong winds again tore through the parched fields
of Kansas, Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. With the fields
freshly plowed, there was no vegetation to hold the dry loess in place. The
finest and most fertile soil formed dark blizzards rising ten thousand feet
to blot out the midday sun. Coarser sand blew around near the ground,
gnawing through fence posts. Streetlights stayed on all day. High winds
piled up Sahara-like dunes, blocking trains and paralyzing the plains.
On April 2, 1935, Hugh Bennett testified before the Senate Public Lands
Committee about the need for a national soil conservation program. Bennett
knew that a great dust storm from the plains was descending on Washington.
With help from field agents who called to report the progress of
the dirt cloud, he timed his testimony so that the sky went dark as he presented
it. Duly impressed, Congress appointed Bennett head of a new Soil
Conservation Service.
The agency faced a daunting challenge. Within a few decades of settlement,
barren desert had replaced the short-grass prairie. President Franklin
D. Roosevelt ended the era of land settlement in November 1934 by closing
the remaining public lands to homesteading. American agricultural
expansion was officially over. Displaced Dust Bowl farmers had to find
work in someone else’s fields.
More than three million people left the plains in the 1930s. Not all of
them were fleeing dust, but about three-quarters of a million displaced
farmers headed west. The grandchildren of the original sooners became
dust blow