During the 1930’s in parts of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado and Kansas the top soil started to blow. Due to the extensive drought in these areas the top soil would form huge dust clouds that would obsure the sun and sweep over the plains. This disaster has been chronicled in Ken Burns two part, four hour documentary The Dust Bowl: A Film By Ken Burns.
PM006MISC
This picture takes place on Black Friday – March 15, 1935 when a dust storm caused 4:00 pm to be blacker than midnight. People thought the world was coming to an end where livestock suffocated and people died of dust pneumonia.
Burns will explore the history of the Dust Bowl through personal stories of the men and women who lived through the storms. The audience will learn the events that led up to the Dust Bowl and the conditions during the legendary storms. The stories of survivors will explain first hand the horrors lived through during the drought and how they coped. The documentary will also take a look at the ecological effects of the Dust Bowl and how it could have been prevented.
The Dust Bowl: A Film By Ken Burns premieres on PBS this Sunday, November 18th at 7:00 PM Mountain Standard Time and will end Monday November 19th. Those who watch the documentary will according to Ken Burns, “experience the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, when a frenzied wheat boom, followed by a decade-long drought in the 1930s, nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation.”