There’s something Old Testament about a churning wall of dust appearing suddenly on the northern horizon. Something so terrifying about the prospect of being consumed by it. And somehow, we are strangely awed by what we see, unable to look the other way.
Almost anyone who’s spent a few years in the Panhandle will know some of what I’m talking about. In our shared experience, a storm of dust is an archetype of our vulnerability and an inspiration to believe in something greater that frequently puts us in our place.
There are a precious few still living among us who can fully appreciate the punishment dust is capable of inflicting when there’s nothing left to hold it back. Ninety years ago this spring, a scourge of dust unlike anything seen before was loosened on the Plains, blowing away whatever illusion of control remained in an area already stricken by economic hardship—but not yet fully dispossessed of hope.
We’ve seen some ferocious dust storms in recent years, but the dusters of the 1930s were different. Just a few years before the dusters began to roll, high wheat prices and a period of wet weather compelled area farmers to break open more and more native grassland for grain cultivation. But farming techniques of that time left the soil exposed and vulnerable in the wind. With the onset of the Great Depression, wheat prices fell dramatically just as an intense drought took hold. Crops failed, and with nothing to hold the dry soil together, the first big dust storms began to blow in 1931.
Then as now, it was the windy vanguard of an early spring cold front that would gather exposed soil into swirling clouds of dust that rolled south with the cooler air. But the dusters of the mid-1930s would grow to staggering heights and were so full of topsoil they would completely blot out the sun. The pulverized soil was then deposited as fine dust that not only covered everything on the ground but found its way into the homes—and lungs—of area residents. The 1930s dusters were as deadly as they were dirty.
The frequency of these “black blizzards” increased year by year. By 1935, there was some hope that a return to a more normal weather pattern might turn things around. Precipitation reports were front-page news in the Amarillo papers as March began to usher in a more springlike pattern. But on April 9 and 10, dust roared once again across the Plains and no one was spared the fury of this storm. Helen Virginia Varner, the wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, was en route to Albuquerque to meet her newspaper publisher husband and “was compelled to halt her motor car trip” in Amarillo because of the low visibility. “I wonder how much longer these storms will have to keep up before everyone moves out?” she asked a reporter. She abandoned her Packard and took the train to Albuquerque, unwilling to face a dust-choked Highway 66 on her own.
The storm that sidetracked Mrs. Vanderbilt was considered the worst to date. “Dust Widens Its Pall” was the anguished bold-faced headline dominating the Amarillo Globe-Times on Thursday, April 11, where it was confirmed things were, in fact, getting worse. But no one could guess that by Sunday the 14th, the situation would deteriorate so soon, and in such a spectacular way.
The morning of the 14th—Palm Sunday—dawned clear with temperatures rising to shirt sleeve comfort as the day progressed. But the weathermen knew a cold front was bearing down and more dust was possible. The first reports of trouble came from Dodge City, Kansas, where, at 2:49 p.m., a great wall of airborne topsoil 500 to 600 feet high turned day to night. The cloud gained steam as it clocked almost 70 miles per hour and barreled through Canadian at 5 p.m. Amarillo was blacked out at 7:10 p.m., and the dust storm still had another 800 or so miles to go on its quest to visit all of Texas in a day.
National attention had been focused on this region for some time, especially after May 1934, when a Plains dust cloud drifted east and dropped its load over New York City and Washington, D.C. When the dust returned in April 1935, Associated Press reporter Robert E. Geiger made his way to the Oklahoma Panhandle to document this disaster as it unfolded. On the 14th, Geiger and photographer Harry G. Eisenhard were six miles outside of Boise City, Oklahoma, when the dust cloud appeared. They attempted to outrun it but a “flank movement” quickly blinded them. They spent two hours covering the six miles into town, navigating by looking down through an open door in order to stay on the pavement. The first known mention of the term “dust bowl” appeared in Geiger’s news account of what he and Eisenhard endured.
Another name that stuck was “Black Sunday.” The April 14 storm was remembered for its ominous coloration, spreading darkness across most of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas and large swaths of Nebraska, Colorado and New Mexico before playing out around 5 a.m. April 15 near the U.S.-Mexican border. It was different enough from what came before to inspire Woody Guthrie to write the song “Dusty Old Dust” (so long, it’s been good to know ya …) based on his experience riding out the storm in “the city of Pampa, the County of Gray” where he lived at the time.
In a later interview, Guthrie spoke of the end-times angst experienced by those sheltering from the dust on Black Sunday. “So, we got to talkin’, ya know, and uh, a lot of people in the crowd that was religious-minded and they was up pretty well on the scriptures, they said, ‘Well, boys, girls, friends, and relatives, this is the end.’”
Thankfully for us, it wasn’t. With support from the federal government and innovations such as the Graham-Hoeme Chisel Plow (invented by an Oklahoma Panhandle farmer and later manufactured in Amarillo), farmers learned to fortify their fields against wind and drought. The rains came back, war broke out and the Panhandle was called on to do the things the Panhandle does best, breaking the Depression’s hold on the area. Then, as a people, we tried to forget about the dust, though it shows up now and then to remind us that we may have taught our hostile environment a few tricks, but it’s not our place to subdue it. The dust, it seems, will always keep us honest.
