Dust Bowl

By the mid 1920's it was obvious that the extent of the area of the farmland of every individual was not sufficient to produce enough to support a family, and it was impossible to make it do so. Still land owners cultivated as much as they could for as long as they could, turning their soil poorer and poorer with every harvest. There was also an increase interest to populate the region and the benefits of the land were highly exaggerated, leading to an unsustainable population. All this worsened conditions of the drought and also slowed the recovery from it. .
             During the 1930s, many measures were undertaken to relieve the direct impacts of droughts and to reduce the region's vulnerability to the dry .
             conditions. The federal government initiated many of these measures, a relatively new practice. Before the 1930s drought, federal aid had generally been withheld in emergency situations in favor of individual and self-reliant approaches. This began to change with the development of the Great Depression in the late 1920s and the 1933 inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The depression paved the way for Roosevelt's New Deal programs, which in turn provided a framework for drought relief programs for the Great Plains. The programs had a variety of goals, all of which were aimed at the reduction of drought impacts and vulnerability: .
             * Providing emergency supplies, cash, and livestock feed and transport to maintain the basic functioning of livelihoods and farms/ranches.
             * Establishing health care facilities and supplies to meet emergency medical needs.
             * Establishing government-based markets for farm goods, higher tariffs, and loan funds for farm market maintenance and business rehabilitation.
             * Providing the supplies, technology, and technical advice necessary to research, implement, and promote appropriate land management strategies.
             As important as these programs may have been, the survival of a majority of the families and enterprises undoubtedly rested solely with their perseverance and integrity.