The Great Depression was bad, but perhaps the worst crisis in 1930s America was the Dust Bowl.
Long droughts and poor farming techniques caused soil in the Midwest to turn into dust. This dust blew in large storms across across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and other Great Plains states, destroying farmland and forcing residents to flee. These unfortunate farmers moved west to places like California and became poor sharecroppers.
With warnings that dustbowl conditions are returning, we pulled some harrowing images from the Library Of Congress.
This may look like a snow drift, but it's actually a gigantic mound of dust enveloping these houses near Liberal, Kansas.
Some people tried to make it work, like this man trying to build a fence to prevent more dust from coming into their farm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. But it was no use.
This area near Dalhart, Texas used to be rich, lush farmland but has been rendered useless by the dust.
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