Seventy-five years later, memories of the Dust Bowl still bring up strong emotions for those who lived through it. Three men recount the hardships and talk about whether or not it could happen again.

April 9, 2010
By Brian Winter, USA Today

MULESHOE, Texas — James Wedel remembers seeing thunderheads on the horizon and thinking: "Oh good, we're finally gonna get some rain."

Photo: Wildlife Refuge Manager Jude Smith explains how a fence post has been buried by tumbleweeds and soil over time at the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge, near Muleshoe, Texas. Smith believes a couple fences are buried beneath this fence. (By Geoffrey McAllister, for USA Today)

One problem: Those weren't rain clouds.

"The wind started blowing, the dust started blowing, and you could hardly see in front of your face," Wedel says. "Static electricity was flying around. It was hard to breathe. I tell you, it was awful scary."

Seventy-five years have passed since the worst of the Dust Bowl, a relentless series of dust storms that ravaged farms and livelihoods in the southern Great Plains that carried a layer of silt as far east as New York City. Today, the lessons learned during that era are more relevant than ever as impending water shortages and more severe droughts threaten broad swaths of the nation.

PHOTOS: Dust Bowl then and now

The storms, made worse by insufficient crop rotation and other farming practices that eroded the soil, unleashed one of the biggest migrations in American history, as thousands fled from Texas and Oklahoma to places such as California. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose department oversees America's land and other natural resources, says another period of mass "relocation" is possible in the 21st century — especially if rain patterns and temperatures change as some expect.

"As we see the effects of climate change … we're going to have to become even more cognizant of our relationship with land, water and wildlife," Salazar says.

Wedel, now 90 and retired, spent the rest of his working life as a cotton farmer trying to prevent another tragedy like the Dust Bowl.

A plaque proclaiming him the area's "Conservation Farmer of the Year" in 1985 hangs in his home, testimony to the use of cover crops and irrigation methods that have become widely accepted since the 1930s among residents of Muleshoe and other West Texas communities.

"I don't think we'll ever see a time like (the Dust Bowl) again," Wedel says. "We've got better farming techniques and we know what we're up against."

Some issue dire warnings

Others are more concerned.

Photo: A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas, on April 18, 1935. In the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s, a single storm could linger for days. (NOAA)

Gary McManus, a climatologist for Oklahoma's state-run climate organization, says global warming could have a "catastrophic" impact across the parts of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma that suffered most in the "Dirty Thirties."

He says the region's climate is so dry, even in the best of times, that just a small increase in average temperatures could quickly cause critical amounts of moisture in the soil to evaporate.

That could mean more severe dust storms. And, McManus says, droughts could become longer and more acute as weather patterns shift. Meanwhile, the Ogallala Aquifer, the vast underground reservoir upon which the area relies for nearly all of its water, is being depleted by growing demand from commercial agriculture and urban centers.

"Our society today isn't used to turning on the spigot and having no water come out," says McManus, co-author of Oklahoma's official report on how the state could be affected by climate change. "That's something that previous generations learned at the point of a gun."

"It really drives home the importance of conservation, of taking care of the resources we have."

Farmers and other land managers from Texas to North Dakota are working with exactly that goal in mind, aware their future may depend on it. On a recent spring afternoon, Jude Smith and his staff at the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge, a 6,500-acre spread of federal land just south of town, were using a backhoe to push a giant bale of hay into a drainage ditch.

The goal: "We're trying to fix mistakes that were made 70 years ago," says Smith, smiling and shaking his head in disbelief.

The ditch was formed by decades of improperly managed water runoff from a nearby agricultural field, Smith says. These days, it carries away large quantities of dirt with each major rainfall. Smith hopes the hay will act as a filter, catching the dirt as it flows downhill — and thus preventing the kind of land erosion that made the dust storms of the 1930s so severe.

"Anything that keeps the land in place is good," Smith says. "Nothing happens fast in these fields, but you think of this as being a little down payment against any challenges we face."

Biggest hurdle: Complacency?

Many residents of Muleshoe — population: 4,571, stoplights: one — are skeptical of dire predictions, says Larry Thornton, editor of the Muleshoe Journal. He says living on an arid plateau plagued by tumbleweeds and tornadoes has taught people "they can overcome just about anything."

Asked whether locals worry about global warming, Thornton shakes his head and says, "Let's put it this way: Rush Limbaugh has a lot more fans around here than Hillary Clinton."

Water issues, though, tend to get people's attention. Even though the winter that just ended was unusually cold and wet, it won't be nearly enough to halt a long-term, possibly irreversible depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, Muleshoe City Manager David Brunson says.

He says that farmers have taken steps to extend the life of the aquifer, which is a primary water source as far north as Nebraska, by using less wasteful irrigation methods.

"But at some point, there are going to be people who just can't get water," Brunson says. "I hope that's still 50 years away. … When it comes, you're going to see this area decline. People are going to have to find something else to do. The population here will decline."

Thornton says a few wells in the area have already gone dry, forcing some farmers to rely on "dryland farming" — abandoning irrigation and relying entirely on the weather, a dicey proposition in an area that gets only about 17 inches of rain a year.

"People here are real serious about water and land conservation issues," Mayor Cliff Black says. "That goes all the way back to the Dust Bowl."

In case anyone gets to feeling complacent, there are still a few folks around to remind them just how bad things were.

"It was rough old times," says J.K. Adams, 93. His family was able to survive by persuading the bank to suspend interest payments on their farm, and by using irrigation from a nearby well. "Daddy did a lot to keep the farm from blowing away," he says.

They were the lucky ones. Adams remembers going out to the highway to sell cantaloupes to people giving up on Oklahoma and Texas and moving west to California — a migration made famous in John Steinbeck's 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath.

Dust and drought destroyed millions of acres of crops and left children sick with what doctors called "dust pneumonia." The devastation peaked on April 14, 1935, when several so-called "black blizzards" rolled across the plains and darkened skies as far away as the East Coast.

By the time the drought began to ease in the late 1930s, more than 2.5 million people had been displaced from their homes, according to Dust Bowl, a book by Kansas University professor Donald Worster.

Asked what separated the fortunate from those who had to move west, Adams pauses. Then tears run down his cheeks.

"Those were some of the finest people in the whole world," he says. "Those folks, they struggled and strained. There was no real reason for it. We just got caught napping, so to speak. We left ourselves vulnerable to the land."

Guardians of the land

Smith, the wildlife refuge manager, is only 41 but he, too, admits to being motivated in part by the specter of the 1930s.

He grew up in nearby Clovis, N.M., hearing stories from his aunt about how she would collect tumbleweeds in the spring when they were still green, boil them — and then eat them to keep from going hungry.

"She said they tasted good, like spinach," Smith says. "But … you don't want to go back to those times."

Smith's efforts are made more difficult by some of the country's most volatile weather. The temperature on Texas' High Plains can fluctuate 50 degrees or more in a 24-hour period, and the wind is merciless. The weather explains why small, man-made mistakes can trigger a chain of environmental disasters, he says.

As evidence, Smith points to a lonely wooden stub protruding a few inches from the ground and says: "That used to be a barbed- wire fence. And I'll bet you there are four or five more fences just like it underneath there."

Such incidents occur when large numbers of tumbleweeds collect on a fence, eventually forming a kind of net that collects blowing dust.

Unless the tumbleweeds are regularly removed with pitchforks by Smith and his crew, an entire fence can be covered up in a matter of years, he says. Ravines then form around untended fence lines, carrying away dirt during storms.

Other problems demand constant attention — and show how even the best of intentions can go awry out here. Smith is working to remove salt cedar trees, a non-native species that sucks massive amounts of water out of the soil and attracts bands of feral hogs that root through the soil, loosening it further.

Ironically, farmers first planted the salt cedar trees decades ago to hold the soil down. "(The pigs) come through, and it looks like somebody's dropped a thousand bombs out here," Smith says.

Smith says area farmers generally are "excellent" about maintaining their land, but he worries that the combination of high commodity prices and the recession could tempt some to cut corners to maintain profits.

Glen Williams, 93, sees things differently. He recalls how tough times "brought out the best in people" and "trained them" to take better care of the land.

"There's nothing quite like adversity to focus the mind," Williams says. He helped support his family during the Dust Bowl by dropping out of grade school and digging up mesquite bushes for $4 a day. Despite his lack of formal education, he went on to be a county judge for 24 years.

"We'll get through this all right," he says. "I'm sure of it."

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