When the Breadbasket Became a Wasteland

On April 14, 1935 — a day survivors called "Black Sunday" — a wall of dust two thousand feet high rolled across the Oklahoma panhandle, turning midday into midnight. Families huddled under wet sheets, pressing rags against their children's faces, unable to see their own hands. The Southern Plains had once been America's breadbasket. But years of reckless plowing had stripped away the prairie grass that held the topsoil in place.…