In 1936, the people in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandle region were coping with a multi-year drought. For years, relentless winds had whipped the dusty topsoil into “black blizzards” that turned farmland into a desert of drifting sand. When Arthur Rothstein arrived to document the catastrophe for the Resettlement Administration, he had already seen widespread human suffering caused by the Great Depression. But in an oral history interview he later described the vast “Dust Bowl” area as the most distressing conditions he ever encountered. “It was like a landscape of the moon,” he said.

Erosion had damaged more than 80 percent of cultivated land in the area. The most heavily affected areas, in addition to the panhandles, were western Kansas, southeastern Colorado, and northeastern New Mexico. Countless farmers abandoned their land. Those who stayed were plagued by “dust pneumonia” that killed people and livestock. Farm chores were focused on the exhausting battle against drifting sand and soil that could bury out-buildings, equipment, and fences.