The Dust Bowl

In the 1930s, the Great Plains transformed from a land of promise into an apocalyptic landscape of suffocating dust storms. For nearly a decade, massive black clouds swept across 150,000 square miles of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, turning day into night and forcing families to abandon their homes. Dust storms lasted for days at a time, reducing visibility to zero. People coughed up clumps of earth and developed "dust pneumonia," while livestock died with inches of dirt lining their digestive tracts. But how did this happen? And more importantly, could it happen again? We speak with Dr. Jeff Lee of Texas Tech University and Dr. Thomas Gill of the University of Texas at El Paso to explore the causes of this catastrophic period in American history, how the Dust Bowl reshaped the nation, and what vulnerabilities we still face today.