The Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl & Its effects

By. Mauron Owens

November 1, 2012

The dust bowl effected many main lands like Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma.  But according to http://www.ask.com/answers/94916541/where-did-the-dust-bowl-take-place “The dust bowl took place in the American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 until roughly 1940. In America it was restricted mostly to the great plains with Oklahoma being hit extremely hard.” ( ask.com).  It connects to the story and the author because he lived in those times and the destruction that the dust bowl left houses and farm was devastating and people were forced to moved around the country and get jobs on ranches.  And the characters in the book of mice and men are moving place to place trying to make money and this was also in the times of the great depression which also didn’t help people get jobs at the time.  According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl “Millions of acres of farmland were damaged, and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes; many of these families (often known as "Okies", since so many came from Oklahoma) migrated to California and other states, where they found economic conditions little better during the Great Depression than those they had left. Owning no land, many became migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm to pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages. Author John Steinbeck later wrote The Grapes of Wrath, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Of Mice and Men, about such people” (Wikipedia).