No Man's Land: Exploring the Dust Bowl History of the Oklahoma Panhandle
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- Опубликовано: 14 май 2024
- Welcome to Wonderhussy Adventure #794
Date of adventure: 4/12-4/13/24
Exploring one of the most desolate middle-of-nowhere places I've ever been: the Oklahoma Panhandle, which was Ground Zero for the Dust Bowl.
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Texas map: Golbez, CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/b..., via Wikimedia Commons
Oklahoma Land Rush painting: John Steuart Curry, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Matt Dillon: CBS Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Ogallala aquifer: Kbh3rd, CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons
Dust bowl photos: George Everett Marsh Jr., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; The U.S. National Archives, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
US map: Gigillo83, original of 70.29.208.129, CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons
Neutral Strip map: c. 1865, CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/b..., via Wikimedia Commons
Sod house: Solomon D. Butcher, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Sarah is a natural born narrator, a real gift.
She's also a true AMERICAN.🗽
@@vernwallen4246 ...and more !!....
Huell Howser would be proud!
You are amazing and so knowledgeable and entertaining, Sarah! Thank you.
@@JoryBlake I met Huell when he was doing a bit on MCAS El Toro. I always liked his work a lot.
My late Father was an Okie. "The dirt just up and blowed away!", and thirteen children (needed for a large farm) were loaded on a Model T pickup with everything they could pack in it. Had to leave everything they had worked for and move.
Hey! I've learned a whole lot from you. Thanks for that.
My Father was the youngest of those thirteen children. There had been fifteen, but prior to the move there were two children that died. The oldest of the living, my Uncle Roy, was an entertainer who had a gig (they were live at the radio stations when it happened) playing guitar and singing. He figured, since he was going... he could fill the false floor of his car with whiskey (during prohibition days). Make a bit of extra cash to help the family be fed. He was pulled over before reaching the big city radio station, and had to spend a few years in the federal prison for bootlegging. Well... the radio station was anxious to fill the slot left open when Uncle Roy didn't show, so they went out into the street just looking for anyone... and saw a man with a guitar strapped to his back who was hanging around for just such an opportunity. That man went on to become one of the most popular entertainers of the era... Eddie Arnold. So... "Anytime... you're feeling lonely... Anytime... you're feeling blue... Anytime, you say... you want be back again... that's the time I'll be coming home to you.".
Millions of stories like this good and bad happy and sad need to be passed on to the next generation and on thank you
Thank you so much for telling this story!
❤ this story! Thanks for sharing 😊
Great story!
Thank you. And thank you WH for just doing what she does, so people like Douglas have a place to tell an amazing story like this.
The book "The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl" by Timothy Egan is a mindboggling account of the lives of people in the 30's.
Don't forget under that charming windmill you had to dig a well between 100 and 300 feet deep to reach the Ogallala Aquifer.
No big rigs until the industrial tide went back to ag and the boys all told em to plow it up, buy a tractor after that OMG what could go wrong with that move? What Prairie ???
The agents had a big hand in this and industry itself had 3/4 of the blame on this to claim for themselves as being responsible for the Dust Bowl.
My grandparents had a farm in the Texas panhandle and their well had to be drilled deeper as the Oglala aquifer got lower. The water pump ran 24/7 during growing season, powered by a V8 engine.
My grandparents emigrated from Scotland in 1904. settled in northwest Saskatchewan Canada, the first home & where my mom was born was a sod hut. the grew veggies on the roof. it was a 1 room shack they had 14 children. T he land is still in the family and still farmed. I am now 77 yrs &have visited the homestead many times
The Dust Bowl was a man-made phenomenon... the government had to step in and teach the farmers to do what's known as Contour farming!!!
Not Contour Farming which is for Hilly country but Crop Rotation and Fallowing.
Actually 0-till is what is used today. We grow crops with very little rain. The government had nothing to do with it in fact it was governments that pushed black summer fallow and the moleboard plow
Just before the huge drought of the great depression; the panhandle of OK had decent rainfall and so incoming farmers participated in 'The Great Plow-up' of the area for farming; which eliminated most of the native grass protecting the soil, creating the 'dust bowl' disaster.
If the U.S. wanted to improve the the history curriculum in schools, WH videos would be a great foundation, you make history come alive, then explore the old houses, the ghost towns, the fossilised reminders of past decisions. Well done. 👍👍👍❤️😊
My late mother-in-law (1920-2015) lived in a sod house in North Dakota as a young child. My late mother (1924-2019) grew up in southwest Kansas and lived through the dust bowl. Last month on one of my road trips, I started in southwest Kansas and drove to the east border to visit family I hadn’t seen for decades along the way. Very satisfying trip. I drove some of old Route 66 on the eastern side of Oklahoma. That side of the state is beautiful. Going back soon, I hope to drive the rest of Historic Route 66.
The young generations have so much to learn about their ancestors than just discovering how their iphone works and exploring social media. The toughness comes from hard times.
Very interesting. My father was part of the dustbowl migration into bakersfield calif.
He lost half a lung as a small child because of the dust.
Tough people they were..🥰
My dad's side of the family migrated to Bakersfield in the first yr of the dust. My grand father had been working the oil fields of Texas. And packed up & quit when he hadn't heard from his wife for 2 months. First week back they were on their way to calif. There was a calif road block, stopping migrants from entering the state, so he had to drive around the road block for a day in a half thru the desert. He got lucky and got his job back with Standard oil working in Taft. After 3 months living in a Migrant camp out of work. Tough times make tough men.
@@douglasgault5458 my granfather and father also worked in tbe oil fields.
There was such strength and resilience in these people.
They lived in cars, built makeshift houses.then achieved the american dream.
The greatest generation. So proud of my heritage.🥰
My paternal biological grandfather came from Oklahoma to Bakersfield, too! Was any of your family part of the Choctaw group? Unfortunately, he abandoned my dad after his wife died (and there's a story there... she got pregnant as a teenager and then eloped to Vegas and lied about her age), and my dad was adopted by a family in Visalia. We only had vague information, but was told that his father was Choctaw from the Oklahoma Territory and came to work the rail/oil with many of the Dust Bowlers. To this day, the largest Choctaw membership outside of Oklahoma is right in Bakersfield. I'm told it's the whitest group of Native Americans most people have ever seen. LOL
Chicasaw
Green Acres. Eddie Albert was a huge proponent of sustainable farming and spent a large part of his life giving speeches petitioning the gov and teaching farmers good practices in the area. Lose the top soil you lose everything. Climate migration. They used to stop Okie's from coming to Cali at the border, pre ACLU. Strange time in history and one that shouldn't be forgotten.
"The History Guy" would say it "deserves to be remembered." Didn't know that about Eddie Arnold!
I gave this one wide circulation because it was very educational about the history of the area. My parents experienced the dry thirties in North Dakota. In the northern states the meridian divided the state into what was called the tall grass prairies on the east and the short grass prairies on the west. After the crop failures of the thirties, crop rotation and summer fallowing were introduced. Only half the acreage was planted each year with the grain crops. In between the planted areas, the soil was left unplanted, but was tilled to turn the vegetation (prairie grass and weeds) over into the soil to make it more productive when it was planted the next year. Fertilization was not used during this time. Now crop rotation and summer fallowing has been replaced by fertilization and all the land is planted in crops, with some new crops like soy beans and sunflowers replacing the minor crops like oats and flax. Wheat remains as one of the major crops on both sided of the meridian. Thanks for taking the time to explain the history of the No Mans Land and the dust bowl. I imagine this is new knowledge for many of your subscribers.
Western Oklahoma. Where you can watch your dog run away for 3 days.
Wow Wonderhussy, I remember when you hit 100k subscribers. I just noticed that you are up to 266k! Five Hundred thousand …here you come 🙃
The old tractor shown at 29:30 is a rare type of tractor. It ran on propane gas. The propane tank is located just ahead of the steering wheel.
A Case LA
My mom came from this land and grew up during the Dust Bowl, thanks for covering this spot and it's history. There was no land for anyone to "inherit" so after my grandparents passed they walked away from the farm. I'm a CA person that can trace my roots to OK, my mom moved there when she was 14, my uncles showed up later (were stationed at Long Beach in the Navy) then WWII happened.
Farmers often take short term loans to get by until harvest time. If it was a bad year, they'd lode the farm. Not many people looking to live there so the bank lets the property go for taxes and there it sits. Or, the people die, the kids long moved away, can't sell the farm, no one wants it. So it goes back to the county for taxes. Either way, people are leaving the rural places.
Great video. In my parents’ case, recovery from the dust bowl happened when WWII started. Dad’s family moved from West Texas cotton farm to the big city of Wichita Falls TX after so many years of drought and got jobs making Levi jeans. WWII starting and entry into the US Army meant two new pairs of shoes and three meals a day. After the war, dad marries mom, they live for a year or two in WF then made the move to Houston where they were able to make a good living.
My family had a farm in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma until 2000. Our family farm is mentioned in many accounts of the Trail of Tears. Our land had an artesian spring, lots of vegetation, shelter from the winter, and plenty of places to bury their dead.
I have a lot of relatives who grew up in the panhandle during the 1930s and 40s (and a few who still live there). There's a certain beauty to the solitude out there.
No man's land was also the name of the border area between West and East Germany. We accidentally drove in it in the 70s and my mom flipped out telling my dad to turn around. And for all those college students that argued with me there WAS a wall around East Germany separating Germany into two countries. I was there. I know it is true.😅
I got to venture through Checkpoint Charlie a few times ...🙂
I did too. We went on a few shopping tours in East Berlin. Got my passport stamped.
I grew up in far Southwest Kansas and went to college at Oklahoma Panhandle State University in Goodwell, Oklahoma, so I know that area very well!
Ahh Tumble Weed Tech! An Okie here!
Home of Robert Etbauer.
Yeah Jonathandenny
I also want to OPSU. Grew up in Southeast Colorado, and currently live there. Like you, I know the area well. Have never minded living in this 5 state region. GO Aggies!!
I 35 highway is for the most part the dividing line from the wetter east and the drier west . The problem with the dust bowl was that the farmer had no idea about wind breaks and the wind blew and blew unrestricted like it always had . After they looked at the problem the Government pushed planting trees on fence lines to break the wind up .
I read a great book once called Covered Wagon Geologist. The author, Charles Gould, spent his long life as a geologist, starting in the 1890’s. He spent a lot of time traveling that area with many others in the service of both the state of Oklahoma and private industry checking out the topography for features that would be likely to make drilling for oil profitable. Prior to the dust bowl, he was the head man for geology for the state of Oklahoma, and he read with alarm how huge areas of grassland were being opened up for farming. He wrote on his official stationary to the head person in charge of agriculture, telling him that he had been all over that area, and that the natural grass that grew there had deep roots. He told him that plowing it up would be a mistake because the soil underneath was loose and the area was subject to extreme wind. The answer he received told him, paraphrasing,” look, I’m sure you know something about geology, but you don’t know anything about agriculture. Leave agriculture to the people that know something about it.” It’s in his book.
The Great Wonderhussy Trek to view the eclipse continues to produce interesting and informative videos.
Hardscrabble farms existed before the Dustbowl years and ever since. So many hopes and dreams. Every property has its own story. Thanks for illuminating this mid-continent,middle of nowhere story. 😊Stay safe Sarah.
My grandfather and grandmother were born in Indian territory near Ponca City. They stayed.
NEBRASKA! Thank you for being the hub of the Ogallala Aquifer‼️ Thank you Wonderhussy for another dive into history like only you can do, but you forgot Nebraska‼️I can testify, I had covered wagon ancestors that located and stayed in Nebraska and lived through not only dust storms, but grasshoppers and Indian raids before the dust storms. But with that prairie wind, dust is a way of life. Imagine living in that vast land in during what seems like a endless winter? It drove many folks crazy.
☮️💜
My grandmother was born in a “Soddy” in 1889 in Beatrice, Nebraska.
Hi Sarah, you just gave us a huge history lesson, thank you! I spent a summer as a bartender at the East Side Tavern in Pueblo, CO during the cool as could be 1970s. When it was time to return to college, I only had $40 in my pocket, so I thumbed my way thru CO, KS, then south thru OK, then east on I20 all the way to my cousin's home in Canton, GA. I enjoyed the trip down to Dallas. OK had green hills & never ending sky! I've always wondered about the dust bowl during the depression years. You're an amazing lecturer of history & so sexy too!
Sarah - You’ve really stretched your wings on this video. Not many people know the history of No Man’s Land. In our 7 years of RVing all over North America… this is the closest we’ve come to running out of fuel in our RV. After unwisely not filling up with Diesel in Boise City there was no open filling station until we got down to New Mexico. We stayed at a nice state park with petrified wood and dinosaur tracks near Kenton. In Kenton we went to the fascinating local museum. The woman working there had been born there when it was a house and moved back to Kenton when she retired.
By the way we stopped at the Herzstein Memorial in Clayton, NM. They had an excellent Dust Bowl exhibit. I had no idea the Dust Bowl extended into New Mexico?
Hey Wonderhussy. It seems that both you and Steve from Sideshow Adventues post your videos at 9:00 pst! So I flip a coin to determine which one I'll view first. You won this time! 😂 keep em coming Wonderhussy!
You should be on the History channel. I always feel a little bit smarter after watching your adventures. Best darn History teacher that I ever had.
"Sooners" were the crooks who jumped the gun and staked out land before they were supposed to.
I was hoping someone would correct the mis-statement.
From Liberal Ks. My whole family came to farm here around 1870. My grandfather and dad had to leave during the drought and and dust bowl. All around the families moved west and my family moved to Iowa. WW2 started and 5 boys including my dad went to fight. My dad served in WW2, Korea and Vietnam where I was born.
Really cool! I noticed when you mentioned all the States where people settled to farm you did miss that when lands were opened up many Americans crossed the border into the Alberta and Saskatchewan territory and to this day their descendants have built up huge farming empires. So many of my neighbours up here their great great grandparents came from Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas etc etc to farm the western Canadian prairies. Lots of old abandoned farm houses here also.
Thanks for this history lesson. My grandma was born in Beaver county OK in a sod house. She escaped the dust bowl by marrying my grandfather who took her with him to Chicago. They worked for Pullman and my grandma was first runner up in the Mrs Pullman pageant.
Those dust clouds weren't just a mile high, they were MILES high! The dust clouds were so big, even New York City was hit hard.
Bad times.
That was fascinating hearing about No Man's Land, I never knew about that. A couple of months ago I found some maps drawn by my great grandfather in 1899. In those maps he labeled the western part of Oklahoma as Indian Territory.
Thank you for coming out here! Fits in nicely with all the pioneer and middle of nowhere videos. It's a fabulous idea to explore this!
What is incredible about that 100th parallel is if you drive west on I-40 you can see with your own eyes the difference between western Oklahoma with the livestock and wheat fields and the Texas Panhandle which is desolate and not much there except a giant feed lot. Really can see what the dude was talking about with "not suitable for agriculture."
That was a really good video. I actually had a client who just recently passed away who survived the dust bowl she taught me all about it and she also introduced me to the Burl Ives music. The name of the song was big rock Candy Mountain. You should listen to it. It’s pretty cool. She was 96 an amazing woman.
I know that song...
Harry McClintock wrote that song in 1895. Didn't record it until 1928. It didn't not become a "hit" until 1939. Burl Ives version was 1949.
Makes me think of the movie "The Grapes of Wrath" with Henry Fonda! Nice work Sarah!
Henry Fonda?
@@kendallsmith1458 Thank you!
The first land run was in 1889, not 1907. 1907 was the year Oklahoma became a state. Thanks for visiting the Sooner State. I hope you enjoyed it!
The Cherokee used to be in the eastern and Midwestern states so they were forced to the west, not not the east.
Great job, Wonderhussy. Used to live in Boise City. The stove in the second house was an avocado green O'Keefe & Merritt. Straight outta the early 1970s.
I live in Oklahoma and grew up in Oklahoma just West of the 100 meridian. This was very accurate. Thanks for the shout out.
I've learned a whole lot from the Wonderhussy channel!
Indeed!
Miss Hussy's unconventional but factual history lessons are like a wind sweeping over the YT plains. When will she receive her first academic robe and head wear?
I was thinking the same? Having a PhD next to her name would give her some street cred too. Hehe.
You mean like a professor Wonderhussy or Doctor Wonderhussy? A PhD in both travelocity ( travels wisely ) and communication ( wordsmith) would be most likely.
Here is how sooners got that name. in 1889, people poured into central Oklahoma to stake their claims to nearly 2 million acres opened for settlement by the U.S. government. Those who entered the region before the land run's designated starting time, at noon on April 22, 1889, were dubbed “sooners.”
THANK YOU. This is what I came to say.
My great-great grandfather played by the rules and rode at the shot of the gun to property he'd already scoped out. On the land was a guy who already had a fire built, his horse wasn't winded... it was obvious he'd come out illegally early... he was a "Sooner." All my great- granddad had to do was touch the butt of his gun, and the guy got up, grabbed his stuff, hopped on his horse and rode away. My great-great grandfather was able to claim the land he wanted.
(The newspapers of the day described a "massive gunfight," but my great-grandmother assured my dad that was NOT what happened; they were just trying to sell newspapers, lol)
My family founded Kingfisher Ok. Grandma before she passed at 94, talked about getting attacked by Indians on a covered wagon. Farmed all of her life while grandpa did airforce career, three wars.
To be accurate though. Kingfisher wasn't founded by "one" family. It was founded in the April 1889 land run by a number of people. And your Grandma wasn't attacked in a covered wagon by Indians in Oklahoma. There were none by 1889
You did a very good explanation of the history. My Dad was raised in western Nebraska that had the severe drought too in the 1930s. There is a really good do umentary about the dust bowl area in the 1930s.
They had a sod house on the original farm.
Haha! We have a Nomansland, (Spelt that way) Here in the UK, Cornwall to be precise!
Cornish American here! Give my regards to Cornwall.
@@martharetallick204 Will do! I'm passing through Torpoint later today!
My dads dad is from Oklahoma! My great grandfather is buried in the same town that his son, who is also my grandfather, was born in!
Thank you for the very interesting video! That must have been a tough life. I wonder how many of today's generation could have survived out there. They were one tough breed of people.
LOL that house you stopped to look over is probably a shell as termites were terrible , my Aunt & Uncles milk house was like that , the wood furniture in it was eaten up . Around 1958 I was staying with them for a week and one evening after they milked their cow we seen a dark cloud up by Alva Ok , when we were done the wind hit and the sand was blowing side ways might of been 40 MPH or more , the sky went dark as night , at bed time I heard tin roofing flying by the house some were , it may of been one of the last dust storms from the dust bowl era .
Great episode Sarah! I recommend reading "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Eagan as well as watching Ken Burns documentary "The Dust Bowl". The big dust clouds/storms are called haboobs and still are happening to this day and recent ones can be seen on RUclips. Love your channel, keep up the great work!
I'm already fascinated at the 3:00 mark. Okay, gotta get back to this.
Interestingly enough, my great uncle was H.H. Finnell who was intramemtal in the education of the farmers and the "restoration" of that whole area down into Texas. If I'm not mistaken another huge problem were the newly introduced disc plows.
I loved seeing those old tractors on the second farmstead. The orange one was a JI Case LA powered by propane from the 40s to early 50s, and the red one was a Massey Ferguson 1085 or 1105 from the 70s. I sure hope someone saves them at some point. Every old farm has an interesting story. Just like my family farm here in Minnesota, all the buildings even the tractors have their storys and were a source of pride for those who farmed there.
26:40 the Olive colored oven, along with the shag carpeting, screams 1970.
Sure does!
Enjoy your historical videos way better than hot springs info.Well done!
My great grandfather built the first sod house in Beaver County (right where you are!) before OK was a state. The windmills were and still are primarily used for watering cattle. My family “dry farmed” (without irrigation, dependent only on the rain) wheat which is what most people did and still do. Nothing like California, where I currently live, where we suck up all the water from the ground creating subsidence issues.
The running joke amongst Texans is that the skinny part of OK above the TX panhandle is how Oklahomans corner the sheep😅
You gotta herd them to a bluff or a cliff. They back up right away. Or so I have been told.
The sheep, not the Okies.
I would never say I didn’t learn anything from the Wonderhussy channel! I learn something new with every video!!
Very interesting how the people just left everything… clothes , curlers .. farming tractors .. makes you really wonder what the heck happened???
Anyways… thanks for another cool video ! 👍
When my grandfather took the family on a cross country road trip from NY state to Ca, in 1939, rather than tie the wooden tent poles and canvas tent to the fenders and running boards, or make a box for the roof, he took out the back seat and put all their stuff and camping gear in the large open space behind the front seat. My 5 year old mother got to sit in the front seat, but her younger, and teenage brothers had to sit on all that stuff, all the way out and all the way back.
Why?
So no one would mistake them for Okies.
It must have been a great trip though, to see an America before the big chains and freeways. and strip malls…
Don’t forget the original farm bill. It paid farmers not to plant as farmers had demonstrated an addicts inability to stop growing a crop they thought was a money maker, until they’d crashed the price and destroyed the soil. Nixons Ag dept changed that program to the massive crop subsidies we know today, when food inflation became an issue in Nixons reelection.
I think that was a Bauer Ring Ware pot in that macrame you walked past-dust bowl era California pottery and worth a pretty penny today!
1889 was the land run. It took till 1907 to become a state.
Oil was discovered there that helped it become a state
my father grew up on a chicken ranch where the land was purchased from someone who was in the land rush exactly to sell their claim. he joined the army air corp the day he graduated from high school, fought WW2, got a G.I. loan on a house in California and raised kids.
American as appl- American as Wonderhussy! 🇺🇸 🫡 ✌️ yet ANOTHER great video!
Classic sign of Evictions in those two houses you visited.
Great vid, WH !
You are a True American Historian....
You should be awarded an Honorary Degree from some Higher Institution.
Greetings from Fife, Scotland.
( I love you, BTW . In a Platonic way )
James . XX
Children's toys and clothes left behind because they only left with what they could carry in their car. Thanks for this happy video
I have a great great grandmother buried out in Oklahoma. Apparently, she was Cherokee. Have been through the state headed to Colorado back in the 1990s. That was a long, bare and arduous journey. Not saying that there's nothing out there but I didn't see much out my way once I left Iowa's green and rolling hills. At least in Iowa you can see a farm a mile off every five miles.
Listen to John Cougar Mellancamp's song "Rain on the Scarecrow". I am picturing farm foreclosures from the 1970s & 80s causing the farms' abandonments.
Greetings from Oklahoma ❤!!
A great book to read about the dust bowl and the people who stayed and rode out the dust bowl is Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time. Based on tbat book I drove out on vacation to Guymon, OK, Boise Cit, OK, and Dalhart, Texas, to see the epicenter of the Dust Bowl. Went to see the XIT Museum and Panhandle State University, OK. Amazing stories of how tough people were and how resourceful they were. They ate the tumble weeds and dandelions to survive.
Afterwards, I drove to visit Roy Orbison's hometown at a Wink, Texas, and went to visit his museum next to city hall. I love Roy Orbison's music and it meant a lot to me. Go look up thr film The Plow that Broke the Plain on RUclips. It was referenced in Timothy Egans book about the life and times on the Dust Bowl.
In case your not aware of it, they are holding an event at El Mirage dry lake this weekend. The SCTA (Southern California Timing Association) is allowing cars and motorcycles in multitudes of classifications to make timed runs to set records. Entry is via the state park HOV entrance. I have not been out to the event for almost 20 years and well be heading out there to see how it is doing.
Farming is a tough way to make a living, IF you make a living. I imagine many farms were abandoned when none of the next gen cared to "stay on the farm".
North Dakota was part of the dust bowl too! On the farm I grew up on, in North Dakota, you can still see the sand dunes in the section lines, that now have grass on, by our farm. It was so dry, that the fierce winds blew the fields soil into section lines along the fences. One of the biggest reasons why it got so bad is #1,. It didn't rain much, and #2,. Poor farming practices. Everything was plowed. Now, there is no till, and CRP land.
FYI, out of over 400 treaties the government agreed to with the tribes, only one was not revoked. And that's between a small town in Texas that honors it to this day.
If an old house has the original toilet, you might see a date stamp on the toilet tank or tank lid. In the 1900s a toilet would last many decades
My dad was born in Blackwell, OK in 1926. His father and uncles owned an oil drilling company back then. They had many tales to tell, but it all came to a halt when they sold out to Standard Oil. I've always wanted to see where he was born. Too old now to take up traveling alone, so I enjoy your videos. Thanks for sharing this history lesson with us sweetie.
Dang, waited for a WH belt out of
Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain,
And the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain.
Yeah, Cimarron County was the epicenter of the dust bowl.
Interesting, informative and…..adorable! Wonderhussy magic!
Those houses have a strong '60s-'80s vibe, which is probably when they stopped buying furniture and other costy items. Makes one wonder how many more decades may pass before the houses collapse and crumble completely, or bulldozers come to clear the land (for what purpose?)
My parents' families were all Kansas farmers -- father's in the northeast and mother's in the southeast. Father's side seems to have been busted by the depression of the 1890s -- my grandfather and his siblings all moved and got town jobs. Mother's side stuck it out, and the dustbowl too -- they didn't become townies until the '40s or '50s. My father hauled ass for California and the booming aerospace industry as soon as he graduated college in 1960. We never did established any real roots while I was growing up, and the whole family scattered across the US, with a few returning to Kansas eventually.
Yeah. those dwellings were called soddies. One was apt to see a goat or two grazing on the roof on occasion. Like you said, people shared living quarters with a few critters, but it was THEIRS.
They owned it...and didn't begrudge burning "buffalo chips" in the fireplace or stove to keep warm in winter.
Great video, Sarah Jane. Back in the 90s, I was talking to some younger folks who'd never heard of "The Dust Bowl Days". I don't like the fact they stopped teaching history in schools. And we
didn't have you back then...so kids were SOL But we have you now, thank goodness.
Oklahoma is the best! I love being an Okie
The Oklahoma land rush was in 1889, Sooners were the ones who crossed into Oklahoma prior to the noon Cannon Shot(s) to start the run. I was born in OKC. University of Oklahoma fans yell Boomer Sooner to honor those who waited for the Cannon booms and also those who came across Sooner.
I have heard that story elsewhere and this is the third time, must be the charm that holds truth
Black Mesa, the highest point in Oklahoma, is a cool hike. Watch out for rattlesnakes though!
John Wesley Powell actually presented a map of arid lands beyond the Hundredth Meridian to the Senate Committee of irrigation and reclamation dividing areas to be settled by watersheds, so there would be less fighting over water rights. But of course, they ignored his expert advise and now we deal with the Colorado River Compact.
That's what happens when they divert the natural waterways and take all of the trees that were around for hundreds of miles, to mine, make charcoal, and grow cotton and tobacco, instead of hemp and other plants used to make baskets, roofing, and many other things needed to have sustainable land. Tobacco and cotton are devastating to the land. My family is from Sapulpa Oklahoma and they picked cotton for 3 cents a pound, while 8 people lived in a 1-room shack, cooking on a 55-gallon barrel cut in half. They moved to California because of the Dust Bowl. Thank You for telling us about this. 😊 Might make some people think? 🤔
My grandpa and grandma came to California out of the dust bowl of Oklahoma. They lived in migrant camps picking fruits and vegetables all over the West Coast. Desperate times for sure.
I wonder if that farm was hit by a twister? That looks like tornado damage. One went through there in 2007.
Sarah, nice presentation, anyway the Dust Bowl had such a public outcry, the government started the US. Conservation Service Being an Aggie myself. I would like to add, It has been determined that the majority of the Dust actually came from Harding County New Mexico. Entire Fields actually moved to Texas and Oklahoma. What a mess. good job Sarah!
I read a book about the Dust Bowl and boy it was knarly what people went through!
LOVE your videos Wonder Hussy!!!
There was a movie with Tom Cruise called far and away about that race for free land in Oklahoma! Not a bad movie!
I look forward to your posts , you do such a good time of making the middle of nowhere interesting ! Your history and insight into the minds of those who once lived..... Shine On Wonderhussy !
This was a fascinating video! Thank you for your insights Wonderhussy!!
the houses you visited were likely early to mid 40s by the architecture. Likely abandoned early 90s . Woo hoo... Woody is a personal favorite. Most people have no idea "This land s Your Land" is a protest song. And it's great you did this video, I've been through there a dozen times, but never stopped, while wondering "what's the story of that house"? I knew the history of the Dust Bowl, and how it hit in the middle of The Great Depression.
I don't think the family ranch near Cañon City, Colorado was in the affected area, but my grandfather talked about the layers of dust that settled on everything.
Love the shout out to "Pootie Tang", great movie...
Welcome to Oklahoma!
I crossed the panhandle many times in a truck going up and down 287 we use to call it 42 miles of hell cause the road was so bad spent a few nights at the truck stop in Boise city love you WH be safe ❤