The Dust Bowl and the Dirty Thirtys by Della Wray Blythe

I have been there! I didn't like it!

I well remember the Dirty 30's and the Dust Bowl. I lived on a farm two miles west of Elkhart, Kansas. Elkhart and Morton County, Kansas was known as the center of the Dust Bowl.

The 1930's were very dry years in southwest Kansas. The wind would blow for days. There was no rain so the crops could not grow to hold the soil. The blowing sand destroyed all vegetation until there was nothing left to try to stop the swirling of the sand. The sand would pile up around the farm buildings until it was as high as a man.

It was on May 21, 1937 the THE big dust storms rolled thru the Elkhart community.

The air felt different. There was no breeze. It was so quiet. Grandma and I went out in the yard to see what was going on. We looked off to the south. The sky looked so strange. As we stood in the yard the cloud continued to roll toward us becoming larger and larger and darker and darker. As it came closer we went into the house to close all the windows and doors and finally to light a lamp. Grandpa came in from the field. I don't remember how long it took for the storm to roll in and over but it was a terrible time.

Some one in Elkhart took a series of pictures as the storm approached on May 21, 1937. Even these pictures cannot describe the feeling of doom that we felt on that day.