Oklahoma's Forgotten Drought: Regional and Federal Responses to Climate Crisis in the 1950s

Abstract

Through much of the 1950s, intense drought afflicted the Southern Plains and American South. Dry conditions and dust storms fostered new soil and water conservation strategies, and stronger ties between agricultural producers and technical experts. Federal and state officials appreciated the disaster's broad economic implications and the need to consolidate relief administration. Oklahoma cattlemen integrated their industry as they responded to the drought. In southwest Oklahoma's WashitaBasin, state officials and local residents reversed their support for upstream flood control dams to protect agriculture in favor of bigger dams to supply municipal water. Following the drought, Congress passed new legislation to increase federal assistance for municipal water supplies. This dissertation has two purposes. First, it examines a drought that has not received much attention from historians. Second, it argues that the 1950s drought revealed new priorities and tensions during the regional economic development that followed World War II. Unlike the 1890s and 1930s droughts, both of which have commanded extensive scholarship, the drought that seared the Southern Plains through most of the 1950s occurred during a relatively prosperous decade. Contemporaries identified the disaster's economic implications more broadly than before. In Oklahoma, the drought fostered statewide irrigation and complementary technology, and it increased the state's responsibility to administer relief. Across the Southern Plains, the drought fostered newassistance to small businesses and part-time farmers, and it catalyzed the region'scattle feeding industry. Nationwide, it contributed to more accessible municipal water supplies.