Episodes
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Reaping the Whirlwind
S1 E2 - 1h 55m
Black Sunday was only halfway through the decade-long crisis. The storms continued. The Great Depression still affected people. Government programs were instituted to help. Learn what FDR’s administration did to try to keep the southern Plains from becoming a North American Sahara desert. Find out why some residents finally decided they had to give up and move somewhere else and how some held on.
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The Great Plow-Up
S1 E1 - 1h 55m
The grasslands of the southern Plains were rapidly turned into wheat fields. Then following the early years of the drought, storms killed crops and livestock and literally rearranged the landscape. The worst storm of them all was on April 14, 1935—Black Sunday—a searing experience for everyone caught in it, including a young songwriter from Pampa, Texas, named Woody Guthrie.
Extras + Features
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Recollection
S1 -
Meet some of the people who lived in the Great Plains and learn a little about the area. The Dust Bowl airs on PBS Nov 18 & 19, 2012.
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First Look | A Storm is Coming
S1 - 20s
The Dust Bowl was the worst man made ecological disaster in American History.
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Recovery
S1 -
In 1935, 850 million acres of topsoil are swept off the Great Plains, with more dust storms to come. President Franklin Roosevelt’s inner circle does not want the area to turn into an “Arabian Desert.”
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Modern Machinery
S1 -
Learn how modern machinery made farming more efficient.
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Black Blizzards
S1 -
Hear from Donald Worster about the increasing number of dust storms the area faced.
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Hugh Bennett
S1 -
Hugh Bennett went on a fact finding trip through the Great Plains in search of a solution.
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Snowstorm
S1 -
More hope came to the dust bowl after a snowstorm hit the Great Plains.
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Trixie Travis Brown: Dust Storms
S1 -
Trixie Travis Brown Talks About Dust Storms.
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Robert Boots McCoy Talks About When The Rains Returned
S1 -
Robert Boots McCoy talks about when the rains returned.
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First Look | Just Like Midnight
S1 - 20s
Survey the causes of the worst man-made ecological disaster in U.S. history: the catastrophic dust storms of the 1930s.
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Robert Boots McCoy Talks About Wheat Prices
S1 -
Robert Boots McCoy talks about wheat prices.
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The Dust Bowl Intro
S1 -
The Dust Bowl was a decade-long natural catastrophe of biblical proportions and the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history. It is the classic tale of humans pushing too hard on nature and nature pushing back during a period of economic boom and bust in the 1920s and 1930s.
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