Review by Ed Quillen
Plains History – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Worst Hard Time: The untold story of those who survived the great American Dust Bowl
by Timothy Egan
Published in 2006 by Houghton Mifflin
ISBN 0618773479
AMONG TRIVIA BUFFS, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, holds a distinction: At the tip of the panhandle, it is the only county in the United States which borders four states: Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. This book explains another distinction. It was the center of a peculiarly American tragedy, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, a skull-shaped zone that stretched from the Republican River in extreme southern Nebraska south to Lubbock, Texas, and east from La Junta, Colorado, to central Kansas.
So it’s not exactly a Central Colorado story, but many of us know old-timers who remember the black rollers, and it’s certainly an American epic, what with its greed, arrogance, boosterism, courage, and pluck. And it’s a tale told well here, drawing heavily on the recollections of those who were there.
People often point to mining as a destructive activity, propelled by avarice, while farming is made to appear as environmentally benign, with farmers as careful stewards of the land. As this book makes clear, that isn’t always the case.
The Comanche and the ranchers knew this domain as superb grassland, a great treeless pasture for bison and then cattle. Sure, there was drought and wind. But the tough buffalo grass had deep roots to survive dry spells, and it held the soil in place when the wind blew, which was just about all the time.
Along came progress, in the form of improved plows. And happenstance, in the form of a string of wet years. And profit, in the form of high grain prices The result was akin to a gold rush, as thousands of people rushed into what had been ” No Man’s Land” to grow wheat and build cities.
One was the seat of Cimarron County, Boise City. ” It was founded on a fraud. Even the name itself was a lie. Boy-City, the promoters pronounced it, from the French words le bois — trees. Except there was not a single tree in Boise City. Nor was there a city. But that didn’t stop the Southwestern Immigration and Development Company from selling lots, at forty-five dollars apiece, in a phantom town in the newly opened Panhandle of Oklahoma. The company sent fliers all over the country, showing a town as ripe as a peach two days into its blush. The brochures sketched a Boise City with elegantly aged trees lining the streets, a tower of cold, clean water gushing from an artesian well in the center of town, and houses any banker would be proud to call home. The streets were paved. Businesses were chock-a-block on Main Street. Three railroads were building lines to Boise City, the company said, and a fourth was on the way. You could grow cotton, corn, or wheat on rich land just outside the c
They came. Some took up 160-acre or 320-acre homesteads. Others just leased land and hired cultivators, the idea being to make a quick fortune from wheat. And for a while, some did:
” If he could produce fifteen bushels an acre from his half-section, that meant 4,800 bushels at harvest. It cost him about thirty-five cents per bushel to grow. At a selling price of two dollars a bushel, his profit was nearly eight thousand dollars a year. In 1917, this was a fortune. A factory worker on the Ford assembly line made only five dollars a day, about one-eighth the take-home pay of a prosperous wheat farmer.”
So for a few years, the boosters’ promises appeared to be coming true. Towns did sprout and grow. Railroads hastened to serve the area. Schools and churches were built. One of the most unpopulated portions of America got settled, and the settlement wasn’t based on some unsustainable extractive process like mining, but on perpetual farms.
But then the rains failed. So did the rivers as drought struck the headwaters of the Arkansas and the Cimarron rivers. Crop prices fell. Fields weren’t planted, and those that were planted did not grow crops. The wind roared down from the north, carrying millions of tons of topsoil. It could be black as midnight at noon, and even the car wouldn’t run, on account of static electricity in the black rollers that killed the ignition system. Dust penetrated every corner of homes, no matter how tightly sealed, and residents sickened and died of “dust pneumonia.” Many fled, but some stayed, either out of necessity or stubbornness.
“In Baca County [Colorado], Ike Osteen did extra chores around the dugout. After being cooped up so long in the pocket of home, Ike had a burst of energy. The dusters had been so thick through February and March that the half-section looked unfamiliar. He was seventeen now, a young man with an itch to get on with life. He wandered about the 320 acres of Osteen family ground, trying to find a familiar landmark. The orchard was dead and covered. A dune, perhaps six feet high at the top, had formed along the length of the tree line. It looked like a wave frozen in place. He saw prints in the sand from jackrabbits and heard a sound that had just arrived for the first time this withered spring — birdsong. Where would they nest? Maybe find a corner of the barn that had not been dusted. The garden space, where the Osteens had grown lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, and corn for popping, was under a drift grave. Implements and machines were buried. Ike found the tops of cultivator wheels and a hors
EVENTUALLY, the federal government’s New Deal stepped in. Thousands of acres were purchased by the feds and converted into ” national grasslands,” akin to national forests. That took land that never should have been cultivated out of cultivation, and the purchase money gave the farmers a stake to start over elsewhere. Those who stayed were encouraged to plant shelterbelt trees to break the wind, and to join soil conservation programs. These have worked, Egan concludes, because the windy droughts of 1974-76 and 2000-03 did not cause new Dust Bowls — the soil generally stayed in place.
The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was like Hurricane Katrina — natural forces meeting human frailty to create an immense tragedy. The story of those who fled it is a familiar one, thanks to the novel and movie, The Grapes of Wrath. But there were some who tried to hang on, even to the extent of forming a “Last Man Club.”
This is one fine book; it grabs you from the start and just won’t let go, with copious research and writing that sparkles.
— Ed Quillen
