In the mid 1930s, the Southwestern United States experienced an ecological disaster that turned a once beautiful landscape into, well, a dust bowl.
A combination of severe drought and over-farming meant that top soil was dryer, and much looser than it had ever been before. The result was devastating dust storms that buried communities, and destroyed lives.
Here are 25 photos to give you a quick glimpse into the hardships of the Dust Bowl. You might need to brush them off.
1
Digging out a fence post to keep it from being buried under drifting sand in Cimarron County, Okla., in 1936.
2
Drives through the Dust Bowl, Texas, 1936.
3
Farm equipment, Dalhart, Texas. June 1938.
4
Face coverings used to prevent sand pneumonia.
5
In the Oklahoma panhandle.
6
Engulfing the residents of Tyrone, Oklahoma. April 14, 1935.
7
One of South Dakota's storms, 1934.
8
On the Great Plains, 1940.
9
Farmer Arthur Coble and sons walking in the face of a dust storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma. 1936. Photo by Arthur Rothstein.
10
Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936.
11
Dust Bowl migrants photographed by Dorothea Lange, February 1936.
12
Approaching a small town in Oklahoma.
13
Buried by a dust storm near a barn lot in Dallas, South Dakota, May 1936.
14
Fleeing dust storm-devastated Oklahoma. March 1937.
15
North of Dalhart, Texas. 1938.
16
Lordsburg NM. May, 1937.
17
One of the worst storms of the Dust Bowl, ''Black Sunday” was said to have stripped the Earth of 600 million pounds of fertile Prairie topsoil. April 14, 1935.
18
Liberal, Kansas, March 1936.
20
Fleeing from the drought in Oklahoma, camping by the roadside in Blythe, California. 1936. Photo by Dorothea Lange.
21
The largest dust storm in the Dust Bowl, April 14 1935.
22
Pumping water from a well to his parched fields. Cimarron County, Oklahoma. April 1936.
23
Dust Bowl area. Cimarron County, Oklahoma. April 1936.
24
Children of a farmer in dust storm area.
25
And three of her children at a pea pickers' camp in Nipomo, California, March, 1936.
