Dust Bowl

In 1930 Yanktonians were hardly feeling the effects of the infamous stock market crash from the previous year. Still, Yankton's 6,000 residents were about to endure one of the harshest and longest experiences of the town's history -- the Dust Bowl.

Although the stock market was not a large concern in South Dakota at the time, the rural credit system was reeling in a fragile financial position. Several factors, including embezzlement, contributed to the closing of 200 banks in the state in 10 years.

Whatever hopes farmers had for a good crop were dashed in the summer. By July 1930 Yankton farmers were noticing thick sheets of dust on their dried fields, and by August many were reporting total crop losses with temperatures rising to 108 degrees.

Each of the next several summers seemed to bring only more of the same -- overwhelming amounts of heat, dust and grasshoppers. Grasshoppers ate everything from trees, gardens and fields, and then chewed paint from houses. Thousands more grasshoppers clung to the railroad tracks, causing the locomotive wheels to slip.

The thick dust covered everything, including household floors and furnishings, and blotted out the sun. Automobile drivers were often forced to drive with the headlights turned on during the day, and Yankton storekeepers found no shortage of difficulty in trying to protect their items from silt.

Conditions hit their worst in the summer of 1936. On July 17 the temperature rose to a high of 116 degrees in Yankton, then still in the pre-air-conditioned age. During such times the Press and Dakotan noted that the "most popular dormitory" in Yankton was the Missouri River bank.

Precipitation in Yankton in 1936 was the lowest ever recorded, totaling only 13.30 inches, even worse than the 16.02 of 1937.

The Great Depression will be remembered in Yankton as the town's fiercest contest with nature during the 20th Century. It was the ultimate test, a time of prolonged suffering and economic hardship that was somehow endured.