Back in the 1930s dust was everywhere! They didn’t have any Air O Swiss humidifiers and I am not sure it would have matter anyway. The farmers were more concerned about their crops than their personal comfort.

The Dust Bowl or dirty thirties was a time of severe dust storms that caused agricultural and ecological damage to the United States and Canada prairies from about 1930 to 1936. There was also a severe drought at the time. Farmers were also not practicing crop rotation and this caused damage to once fertile fields. There was so much dust that at times that clouds of dust could be seen as far east as New York City. Areas of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas were affected for a total of 100,000,000 acres.

By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the affected areas into neighboring states. Almost 200,000 alone moved to California. The plight of these people has been memorialized by John Steinbeck in his book (and subsequent movie starring Henry Fonda), Grapes of Wrath.