Why did farmers move to California during the Dust Bowl?

Migration Out of the Plains during the Depression. During the Dust Bowl years, the weather destroyed nearly all the crops farmers tried to grow on the Great Plains. Many once-proud farmers packed up their families and moved to California hoping to find work as day laborers on huge farms.

What event caused farmers in the 1930s to migrate west to California?

Soil conservation practices were not widely employed by farmers during this era, so when a seven-year drought began in 1931, followed by the coming of dust storms in 1932, many of the farms literally dried up and blew away creating what became known as the “Dust Bowl.” Driven by the Great Depression, drought, and dust …

How did the Dust Bowl migration affect California?

The Dust Bowl exodus was the largest migration in American history. By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states; of those, 200,000 moved to California. When they reached the border, they did not receive a warm welcome as described in this 1935 excerpt from Collier’s magazine.

Why did farmers migrate to cities?

As large farms and improved technology displaced the small farmer, a new demand grew for labor in the American economy. Factories spread rapidly across the nation, but they did not spread evenly. And so the American workforce began to migrate from the countryside to the city.

What happened to farmers during the Dust Bowl?

Farmers tore up even more grassland in an attempt to harvest a bumper crop and break even. Crops began to fail with the onset of drought in 1931, exposing the bare, over-plowed farmland. Without deep-rooted prairie grasses to hold the soil in place, it began to blow away.

How did the Dust Bowl affect farmers?

And how did the Dust Bowl affect farmers? Crops withered and died. Farmers who had plowed under the native prairie grass that held soil in place saw tons of topsoil—which had taken thousands of years to accumulate—rise into the air and blow away in minutes. On the Southern Plains, the sky turned lethal.

Did the Dust Bowl affect California?

In the 1930s, a series of severe dust storms swept across the mid-west states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas. The great Dust Bowl migration transformed and reshaped California for years to come.

What states did the Dust Bowl affect?

Although it technically refers to the western third of Kansas, southeastern Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle, the northern two-thirds of the Texas Panhandle, and northeastern New Mexico, the Dust Bowl has come to symbolize the hardships of the entire nation during the 1930s.

How did the Dust Bowl affect California?

The arrival of the Dust Bowl migrants forced California to examine its attitude toward farm work, laborers, and newcomers to the state. The Okies changed the composition of California farm labor. They displaced the Mexican workers who had dominated the work force for nearly two decades.

Where did the farmers go during the Dust Bowl?

In the 1930s, farmers from the Midwestern Dust Bowl states, especially Oklahoma and Arkansas, began to move to California; 250,000 arrived by 1940, including a third who moved into the San Joaquin Valley, which had a 1930 population of 540,000. During the 1930s, some 2.5 million people left the Plains states.