The 1930s came down hard on all of America, but the Great Plains area got it even worse with the advent of the Dust Bowl. This giant drought, a disaster for America’s breadbasket, made life unendurable for Midwesterners. Put out of farm work, people became migrant workers, trekking to California in search of jobs. At the time, photographers like Dorothea Lange began documenting American lives and struggles through the camera lens, capturing tragedies like Depression and Dust Bowl.

Collected here are photos of undernourished and sick children, homeless families, desolate farms, and storms engulfing the land in dust. As blunt and shocking they may look to you today, imagine how much they astonished those Americans living at that time.

Machinery Buried By Dust In South Dakota, 1936

A Farmer And His Family Trudging Through A Storm, Oklahoma, 1936

Dust Storm Approaching Stratford, Texas, 1935

Young, Migratory Mother, California, 1940

Topsoil Eroded On Farm, Kansas, 1930s

Dust Storm Approaching Rapidly, Oklahoma, 1935

A Farmer’s Son Amidst Devastated Land, Oklahoma, 1936

Laborers’ Squatter Camp, California, 1940

Cultivating What Remains Of The Cotton Crop, 1930s

Eroded Farmland, 1930s

Dried-Out Farmland, Oklahoma, 1930s

A Farmer Inspecting His Land, Colorado, 1938

A Dust Storm (AKA “Black Blizzard”), South Dakota, 1934

Child With TB On Crutches, Oklahoma, 1935

Resettled Farm Child, New Mexico, 1935

Another Dust Storm Rolling In, Kansas, 1935

Migrant Worker Mom With Kids, California, 1936

Wind-Eroded Farmland, Kansas

Homeless Family Trekking To Find Work, California

Heading To Los Angeles For Work, California, 1937

Awful Water Erosion, Alabama

A Dust Storm Rolls Over A Main Street, Washington DC

Photo: USDA NRCS Photo Gallery/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Sharecropper Floyd Burroughs, Alabama, 1935-1936

Photo: Walker Evans/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Dust Bowl Winds Pile Up Against Barn In Kansas

Dust Bowl Dune, circa 1936

Dust Over Texas, circa 1935

Dust Over Dakota, circa 1935

Dust Bowl, Texas Panhandle, March 1936

Photo: Arthur Rothstein/Library Of Congress/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Reference

• 20+ Powerful, Bleak Photographs From the Dust Bowl, Ranker, 24 April 2019, by Carly Silver https://www.ranker.com/list/photos-of-life-during-the-dust-bowl/carly-silver?utm_source=sendgrid_newsletter&utm_medium=WeirdHistory&utm_campaign=Active