Monitoring Drought
Links to Historical Drought Information in the United States
Understanding how drought has affected a region in the past will help determine the kinds of measures you need to implement in order to prevent impacts from recurring in the future. This page lists some of the on-line information available on historical droughts in the United States.
General U.S. Information:
The Dust Bowl
A discussion of the impacts – social, environmental, and economic of drought in the United States in the 1930s
- Dust Storms and Their Damage
- Photos from the collection of the Wind Erosion Research Unit of USDA’s Agricultural Research Service at Kansas State University.
- The Dust Bowl (photos)
- A collection of 20 photos for sale from The Social Studies Web.
- American Memory from the Library of Congress
- A multi-format look at daily life in Farm Security Administration migrant work camps in central California, 1940 and 1941.
- Weedpatch Camp
- The story of the Arvin Federal Government Camp, immortalized as “Weedpatch Camp” in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
- Dust Bowl footage
- A short film clip of a dust storm during the 1930s. From the website of the USDA/ARS Wind Erosion Research Unit at Kansas State University.
- Surviving the Dust Bowl
- The website of the 1998 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) film “Surviving the Dust Bowl”. Provides a good background on the people and events of the 1930s Dust Bowl.
- 1930s Dust Bowl
- Excerpts from “The Dust Bowl, Men, Dirt and Depression” by Paul Bonnifield. On the Cimarron Heritage Center (Boise City, Oklahoma) website.
- Woody Guthrie Dust Bowl Ballads
- Discussion and analysis of Guthrie’s “Dust Bowl Ballads” recording.
- America from the Great Depression to World War II
- Photos from the Farm Security Administration—Office of War Information Collection, 1935–1945.
- The Plow that Broke the Plains
- The story behind the 1936 documentary made for the Farm Security Administration on the destruction and suffering associated with drought in the early 1930s.
- The 1996 Drought in the United States: Case Study
- A look at the impact of the drought
Historical State Drought Informaion
- California
- Colorado
- Florida
- Hawaii
- Kansas
- Nebraska
- New Hampshire
- New Mexico
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Texas
- Wyoming
Historical Drought Information of Cities
- Fort Collins, CO
- New York, NY
- Waterford, VA
© 2006 National Drought Mitigation Center