Dust cloud approaching, Boise City, Oklahoma, April 15, 1935
The iconic photos from the southern plains states during the Great Depression say it all: the haunted eyes of weary mothers, children with their faces wrapped against the choking dust and families piling their belongings into trucks and heading to California.
In the two-part documentary The Dust Bowl, filmmaker Ken Burns (The Civil War, Baseball, Prohibition) focuses on the nearly decade-long drought that, coupled with unsustainable farming techniques, destroyed millions of acres in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico.
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