The Dust Bowl Migration

The Dust Bowl exodus was the largest migration in American history. A total of 2.5 million people left the Plains states in the 1930s. Most moved to neighboring states, but some 460,000 people moved to the Pacific Northwest, where they found jobs in lumbering or building the Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams More than 300,000 others moved to California (Gale - Enter Product Login ).The large movement was an effect of a natural climate change called The Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl is a situation where people take control of the atmosphere, which makes living conditions in the Great Plains for the farmers more strenuous (American Dust Bowl). When the Dust Bowl conditions led to farmers abandoning their fields, mass migration patterns emerged with populations shifting from rural areas to urban centers. Farmers and landholders in the Great Plains had to migrate due to a period of …show more content…
Although Canada suffered the same effects, but in lesser magnitude, both countries felt the impact of their agricultural downfall. The Dust Bowl started in Canadian land which then blew over to lay its devastation upon that of America. Hundreds of millions of tons of dried topsoil were blown by the wind (The Dust Bowl ). Black clouds moved across prairies and continued east, leaving buildup on the skyscrapers in New York. Because of the drought of the 1930s, Canadian prairie farmers were forced to abandon their farms to find work in the cities (The Dust Bowl ). While they found relief by migrating to urban areas, Americans on the other hand faced more challenges because the majority of the climate change’s impact occurred in America. With the decrease of farmers in the rural areas of the country, the poverty level of America increased drastically (The Dust Bowl ). Because less people could afford to buy things, the amount of products being produced decreased, which led to a negative change in unemployment