The Missouri River once carried impressive amounts of suspended sediment. That sediment found its way into the stream from the prairie-pothole region of North Dakota, the badlands of South Dakota, the short-grass plains of northeastern Nebraska, and the tall grass prairies of Iowa. It came in many forms, including fine granules of sand, tiny particles of clay, bits of pulverized coal, and even pea-sized gravel. It floated, rolled, and spun its way downstream. A portion of it spilled onto the valley lowlands during the Missouri’s annual floods. Some of it became sandbars or islands. A percentage of it flowed all the way to the Mississippi and beyond. The Missouri acted as a conveyor belt, moving soils from the Rocky Mountains and northern plains to and thru the agricultural Midwest. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the annual suspended sediment load past Omaha equaled 100,375,000 tons. That was enough goop to fill 5,500 railroad cars (with fifty ton capacities) every single day. Continue Reading »
The Loess Bowl
From 1929 to 1940, the Great Plains experienced a devastating drought. Scorching temperatures, an over-abundance of sunshine, and dry winds ravaged the land. From the Dakotas to Texas, soils turned to powder and blew away. In those hard, lean years, plains residents experienced hundreds of deadly dust storms. The Black Blizzards threw billowing clouds of dirt into the atmosphere, blotted out the sun, suffocated stock animals, and inflicted a phenomenon known as dust pneumonia on the rural population. Untold numbers died from the respiratory ailment. Continue Reading »
