Article 1: If It Rains… These Three Little Words Rule Life in Dust Bowl of U. S.
April 15, 1935
Editor’s note: This is the first of three stories surveying the situation in the dust sector of the
Southwest—large in itself-, but small in terms o) the whole—which has been swept by a series of spectacular dust storms. They are written by Robert Geiger, Associated Press staff writer, who traveled through the greater part of the “dust bowl.” The story he found comingles damage and fortitude reminiscent of the pioneers. In fact, many of the farmers he talked with were pioneers. Thousands of acres have been hit hard, but over many other thousands the dust clouds caused only annoyance—and more Spring house-cleaning. Damage to wheat probably runs into millions, but what part is due to wind erosion and what to drought is beyond separation or calculation
BY ROBERT GEIGER.
Associated Press Staff Writer.
GUYMON. Okla., April 15.—Three little words—achingly familiar on a Western farmer’s tongue—rule life today in the dust bowl of the continent—
If it rains…
Ask any farmer, any merchant, any banker what the outlook is. and you hear them—if it rains…
If it rains… some farmers will get a wheat crop.
If it rains… fresh row crops may flourish.
If it rains… pasture and range for live stock may be restored.
If it rains… fields quickly listed into wind-resisting clods may stop the dust.
If it rains…it always has!
The next three weeks will tell the story.
Black and saffron clouds of dust, spectacular, menacing, intensely irritating to man and beast alike, choking, blowing out tender crops and lasting without merry for days, have darkened everything but hope and a sense of humor in the dust sector of the Southwest.
War Brought Plow to Area.
The Southwest Is big and the dust area is only a small chunk of it. Roughly, it takes in the western third of Kansas. Southeastern Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle, the northern two-thirds of the Texas Panhandle and Northeastern New Mexico.
It always has been a region of sparse rainfall. The World War, with its high wheat prices and urgent demands, sent the plow Into the sod and turned this into wheat country. Before then it was range land, and the crop was native buffalo grass, which held the soil firm against insistent winds.
The last three years have been years of droughts, with this Spring’s field-eroding dust storms their stifling climax. But dust storms are nothing new in the Southwest. Forty year ago—decades before the wheat farmers came with their combines—a dust storm of such violence swept Western Kansas that it stopped trains, just as they were stopped last week.
“This is a tough, hardy country,” its farmers say. “It will come back overnight.”
“Dusters” approach the prairie country in two ways.
Sometimes they start when a gigantic yellow-and-red cloud floats across the country, high in the air, blotting out the sun.
The wind is gentle, growing in velocity very slowly. Thus type of storm carries a fine, powdery silt that seems soft and hazy—until you start breathing in it.
The other type starts with a blast, and a huge black cloud approaching across the plain at tremendous speed. It strikes all at once along a well-defined front It carries sand and on hands and face feels like the blast of a chaff from a threshing machine.
When at its height, bright lights in towns are invisible across the street, visibility is zero and. within buildings, lights must be turned on as at night. Motorists continuously crawl along at 5 and 10 miles an hour, unable to peer ahead for more than 10 or 15 feet. Busses are stopped—sometime trains.
The fine silt penetrates motor blocks and. if motorists are unwary, grinds out bearings.
Drifts Along Highways.
These are the storm which leave drifts of dust along the highways and fences—sometimes dust drifts up to the eaves of farm buildings.
It can t be kept out of a house, and dishes have to be washed—not three times, but six times, daily—before and after every meal.
Housewives don’t like them, of course, but the dust belt grins and bears It.
Merchants do business as usual, unless the storm gets too severe. Then they hunt a fourth hand at bridge, lock the front door and retire to the back room to play it out.
It get into your clothes, literally in your hair, and sometimes it seem in your very soul. Certainly it, gets under the skin.
But. despite the hardship and a generally unencouraging prospect, not a single one of more than a hundred farmers interviewed by your correspondent was leaving the country. Each one had hope of getting a crop.
Take Charles Hitch, an elderly rancher-farmer, living south of Guymon, who came here in 188(1.
“For the first time since I have been on Coldwater Creek—and I was the first settler—we are thinking of shipping cattle to greener pastures,” he said.
Drought Worse This Year.
“Recent dust storms are not much more severe than others in former years,” Hitch said, “but the drought is worse.
“My ranges have supported as many as 10,000 head, but I have only 800 head now and they cannot find sufficient feed. We have to feed them cottonseed cake.
“But cattle prices are on the upgrade and I am not discouraged. We even will get a wheat crop if rain comes. If there is no rain we will have to start shipping cattle in a few-weeks.”
A. L. Thoreson lives over the line in Texas and is a big wheat producer. He raised 90.000 bushels in 1931, got only 25 cents a bushel for it. The best he can hoe for, he thinks, is a half crop.
“But we are not suffering acutely,” he added. “The Government is paying better than a dollar an acre to as in wheat benefit payments and, in addition, we can sell what wheat we raise. That will keep the farmers going. The Federal wheat program is O. K., and if it wasn’t for that the farmers would be in an awful hole. They can hold on indefinitely with wheat payments.”
And then there is I. R. Bryan, farmer northwest of Guymon, who could have left 10 v&rs ago. after 30 years of farming in the Panhandle, “with $35,000 in my pockets.”
“I made it in row crops and lost it in wheat.”
“I could have left here wealthy and I’ll be damned if I am going to walk out of here broke now.”
Article 2: “Let ’Er Blow”
April 16, 1935
Farmers Echo Words of Veteran of Panhandle, Refusing to Leave.
Editor’s note: This is the second of three stories describing the situation and the outlook in the dust-plagued sector of the Southwest, the source of dust storms which have swept as far east as the Atlantic seaboard, and west to the Pacific Coast.
BY ROBERT IGEIGER,
Associated Press Staff Writer.
SPRINGFIELD, Colo., April 16 —A man unfamiliar frith the high plains dry-farming region, birthplace of the black blizzard, might see only despair and desolation in wind-scdured fields and dust-drifted roads and farmyards.
It does look pretty desperate, and some families have given up hope and moved away. Not many. Dry-land farmers have been through dust storms before, and most of them echo the anonymous old timer, a veteran of the Panhandle, who said:
“It takes grit to live out here—let ‘er blow!”
As a matter of record, they had storms a century ago much like those of 1935.
Pastor Recalls Storm of 1839.
Rev. Isaac McCoy, pioneer surveyor and missionary, reported one in Western Kansas in November, 1830, which cut visibility to 30 yards, made hoof prints invisible and masks imperative.
Again, in 1913, sand and dust drifted to the eaves of Isolated farm buildings in one section, and in spots the region looked as it does today.
With this background of experience and endurance, and the knowledge that, given water, they can get remarkable crops, the dry-landers are hard to discourage.
Traveling through the dust sector—through Southeastern Colorado, Southwestern Kansas, the west end of the Oklahoma Panhandle and the north tip of the Texas Panhandle—you see a region which now has the appearance of a vast desert, with miniature shifting dunes of sand. A
rain might turn it green overnight, but that is how it looks now. There are spots where wheat fields still were green last week.
Great Colony of Ant Hills.
Many of the fields that were planted to wheat last Fall give the illusion of a great colony of ants, with hills marking spots where tumble-weeds have caught and dust drifted around them, These little dunes are about a foot high.
In other places the drifts are as high as fences, especially in corners. Snow fences that have held virtually no snow for four Winters are drifted to the tops with sand, and one can walk over them.
Roads are blown clean of sand (surfacing material) for miles at a stretch,
acid in many parts of the region a powdery white silt covers the countryside.
On the roads can be seen an occasional car, loaded with a farm family, usually with a truck following carrying household goods. Some are headed for Eastern Kansas or Missouri or Eastern Oklahoma, where rainfall has been normal, or to the Colorado mountain country.
To Return When Rain Comes.
Postmaster Herman Davis of Springfield, Colo., says about a dozen families have moved away, but most of them made a temporary change of address, planning to return when rain comes.
J. R. Peters of Boise City, Okla., said he would leave ” immediately” if he had means.
“If I leave I can’t get wheat and com payments or relief, and that’s all that’s keeping me alive,” he said. He hasn’t had a crop In four years.
But E. H. Libbey, a neighbor, came out of Sunday’s big dust storm smiling.
“Theyil have to carry me out of this country feet first,” he said, grinning. “I won’t leave voluntarily.”
“However,” he added, “I’m going to move about 20 miles west, where the dust ain’t so bad. I live farther down that way now than the prairie dogs will live, but I’m sticking it out.”
Salty Sense of Humor.
Edna Lynn, social service director of Texas County, Okla.. one of the biggest wheat counties, says that many farmers who swear they will move away every time a dust storm strikes change their minds with the first sunny day.
Her staff, working over the county, has reported almost 100 families leaving this section a week ago. Many of these families were land owners and will return when the dust subsides and rain comes. She does not expect the “renters” to come back.
Withal, a salty sense of humor prevails.
In Guymon, Okla., a farmer purchased a pair of rubber boots, slung them over his shoulder and started down the three blocks of Main street, where farmers stood in gossiping groups. The sight of the rubber boots brought shouts of laughter.
Article 3: Rain Now Hope in Dust Belt, Where Aid Is Farm Reliance
April 17, 1935
South west Resigned to Fate With Daily Storms, hut Land Is Not Beyond Restoration in Most of Area.
Editor’s note—This is the last of three stories summarizing conditions in the dust and drought belt of the Southwest.
By the Associated Press.
LAS ANIMAS. Colo.. April 17.—The dust belt suddenly ends on the road that turns west from Lamar, Colo. It is like coming out of a tunnel into an archway of sky.
The stars twinkle to the west; behind, to the east, hangs the pall of dust. You start swinging up the irrigated Valley of the Arkansas, and thinking of the words of Bill Baker, back in Boise City. Okla., “what this country needs is water.”
Baker is the county agent for Cimarron County, and he calls it “some of the best land in the Panhandle.”
Everything has been seared to a discouraging lifeless gray. Dust storms come almost daily. Mostly, the residents are resigned to them, sustained by their philosophy that when rain
comes their county will be green overnight.
54 Years in State.
Baker has lived in Oklahoma 54 years, and for 13 years has been a county agent. Now he is seeking to have a huge dam constructed, the Kenton.
“We must have water to grow vegetables and produce for our families,” he said.
“During the years from 1926 to 1931 the first records were kept, the rainfall was 19 inches a year. Since 1931 the average has been but 12. This county is a story of the drought. It has lost its vegetation, and the dust storms will last until we can cover the country again with green, growing things. The land has not been seriously or permanently hurt.”
Again he voiced his faith:
“This is the most productive country in the world. And you will see it come back overnight.”
From Cimarron County north and south is what appears to be one of the worst sections of the drought-dust belt seen on a week’s tour of the sector. There hardly is a green blade left. Only one day on that week’s trip was the sun visible, and only one night could you see the stars.
Barbed wire fences are only dark lines, jutting up from what looks like desert. The roads are only wind-swept streaks of hard-packed ground, shut in by a fog of dust.
Kept Alive by Aid.
Just south of Boise City, near a dust-blown cemetery, lives J. R. Peters, who has been in the region about 20 years. His house is a two- room frame building, weathered and gray.
“All that is keeping me, and a lot like me. on this land, is the benefit payment the Government is making,” he said. ‘‘We get about $1 an acre for our wheat lands. I have about 100 acres of land classified as wheat growing. We haven’t had a crop for four years.
“I’ve been hanging on because I can make a little money in relief work, besides the wheat checks. It’s barely enough to keep me, my wife and two children going.
“If we move we lose the wheat money and relief work. Where would we go? The dust seems to be almost everywhere. We can’t get out of it.”
But R. H. Libbey, who lives only a few miles away, insists “they’ll have to carry me out” before he would leave.
Dust storms are a not uncommon characteristic of the high dry-farming region that fans Eastward from the Rockies, but not of the intensity or endurance this Spring has seen.
The drought, four years long, is blamed for that. Wheat needs a fine-tilled soil, and with no vegetation to hold it, the land blows. No wheat can grow in the drought.
Several plans have been urged by erosion experts as control measures, but foremost is listing, which digs deep furrows across the eroding land. Terracing of rolling land, pond and lake construction and three shelter belts are other methods to combat the drought.
A great ‘‘dust barrier” in Far West Kansas is being listed now, but frequent dusters have made works difficult that of the 2.500.000 acres in the blowing area which were to be listed, only 50.000 have been completed.
There are other methods of preparing the ground which the agricultural experts believe will help control the dust, and D. A, Savage, who is in charge of the forage crops investigation at the Government station at Fort Hays, Kans., believes relief lies in resodding the poorer lands of the j
Great Plains with Buffalo grass, Its original crop.
It would have to be done by hand, and experiments at the station indicate that the grass will re-establish itself in three normal seasons. Cultivated land left to revert to grass itself will do it—in about 20 to 25 years. But there is no question of what the dry-land farmer wants. He wants rain.
Bibliography
Evening Star. (Washington, DC), Apr. 15 1935. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83045462/1935-04-15/ed-1/.
Evening Star. (Washington, DC), Apr. 16 1935. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83045462/1935-04-16/ed-1/.
Evening Star. (Washington, DC), Apr. 17 1935. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83045462/1935-04-17/ed-1/.