Earlier, we talked about the run-up to the greatest natural disaster in American history, the Dust Bowl.

Between 1870 and 1920, settlers poured into the Great Plains, plowed under native grasses, and planted grain.

Then in 1929, the Great Depression struck, and grain prices collapsed. In 1931, a long drought set in.

Farms failed across the region. Millions of acres, stripped of grass and barren of crops, lay untended.

The fierce prairie winds carried the dry topsoil high into the sky in roiling storms of black dust that pummeled farmers and buried buildings.

In 1933, a storm like this came nearly every week.

In 1934, the dust clouds expanded to cover the Midwest.

In 1935, a blizzard of hot, black soil raced across the country at 100 miles an hour, cutting visibility to three feet and blanketing Washington, D.C.

By then, nearly a billion tons of fertile topsoil had been carried off the Great Plains.

The human toll was staggering. More than 3 million people abandoned their farms and businesses and left the Plains, penniless.

Those who stayed suffered: respiratory diseases from breathing dust, hunger so severe they had to eat tumbleweeds.

Infant mortality soared and birth rates dropped to the lowest in U.S. history.

What finally ended the Dust Bowl? We’ll see, in our next and final installment of this story.