The Dust Bowl: Once Was Enough

Book Review by Kelly Smith, NDMC Science Communicator

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived The Great American Dust Bowl
by Timothy Egan
2006, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York
340 pages
Winner of the 2006 National Book Award for Non-Fiction

Timothy Egan’s book, The Worst Hard Time, could not be a more timely reminder of the consequences of short-term, profit-driven land use policies on the Great Plains. With the lure of ethanol driving up corn prices and the downplaying of the Conservation Reserve Program, we are once again seeing incentives to plant every available inch, and many hold fast to the belief that groundwater irrigation will always be viable. Egan interviewed Dust Bowl survivors to reconstruct the experiences of families that sank roots and invested their lives in the Plains, only to watch their dreams and farms dry up and blow away. A few of the families, to their immense credit, held on and still farm.

There were people who knew better, starting with the Native Americans, whose livelihoods were intertwined with the herds of bison that thundered across the Plains, amply nourished by the complex mix of native grasses. Government policy led to eradication of the bison so that Native Americans would move off the land, clearing the way for white settlers. According to Egan, there were also cowboys who also knew better, who recognized that the land was good for growing grass and for grazing animals, but not for intensive agriculture. The land they first encountered was bountiful and good, and tilling turned it upside down.

The Homestead Act and high wheat prices combined to encourage plowing every available acre. Egan’s book chronicles the dreams and misfortunes of Germans from Russia and other peoples who settled the High Plains, as well as the politicians and policy makers who tried to make sense of it.

Hugh Bennett emerges as a prophet of the times in Egan’s account, “a son of the soil” who learned from his father that “the soil of their farm was not simply a medium through which passed a fibrous commodity but also a living thing,” who went on to study soil in graduate school and to complete a soil survey of the United States. Bennett was one of the first to recognize humans’ role in creating the conditions that led to the Dust Bowl – drought, after all, being a regular feature of Plains climate – and to advocate policies that encouraged more appropriate soil management practices.

By Egan’s account, Bennett ingeniously timed his presentation to Congress on the need for a Soil Conservation Service to coincide with the arrival in Washington of a huge cloud of dust and dirt, an experience that convinced them more rapidly than any amount of testimony could have accomplished.

Egan concludes that “the High Plains never fully recovered from the Dust Bowl.” He points to some bright spots, such as the establishment of grasslands, but is not particularly optimistic about current trends.

In addition to being readable and relevant, Egan’s book is a fine illustration of how land-use practices can increase and decrease resilience to drought.

Back to DroughtScape Summer 2007