Drought affected areas of the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression in the United States. A Nursery school in the drought area. Works Progress Administration (WPA) nurses conduct a health checkup physical examination of children. Children seated on benches in the school. A nurse questions a little girl. They administer typhoid serum. A nurse takes a little boy’s temperature while another examines a boy's eyes and throat for signs of problems caused by dust. Farmers with horses and horse carts. They construct roads under the Works Administration Program (WPA). They employ horses and plows for road building to carry crops to market. They cut wide fire lanes in drought damaged farms to prevent the spread of Prairie fire. Construction of assorted small dams to capture rainwater. Men transport dirt and rocks in wheelbarrows, dig in the ground, and work with machinery and equipment. Larger dams are also built. Men at cleared land. They twist strengthening wires into place using pliers. Men wearing gloves and smoking pipes work at the dam site.
Drought affected areas of the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression in the United States. U.S. Army engineers and WPA (Works Progress Administration) relief workers construct the Fort Peck Dam in Montana. Workers digging. Tunnels and spillways at the construction site. Heavy machinery and equipment. A worker on the tracks leading into a tunnel. The gigantic structure at the headwaters of the Missouri River. Ranchers with their cattle near ponds and lakes built by WPA labor. An old rancher on his horse with a dog alongside. Ranchers with horses as they drink from a pond. A rancher with his son and their dogs look on as cattle graze and bathe.
A documentary film, titled "The Dust Bowl", showing the drought ridden areas of Southern plains in United States. Cattle grazing. A map of United States showing Southern plains, then the states of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and the city of Dalhart is also seen highlighted. Cattle grazing, a man standing outside a house. Views of Southern plain terrain. Tractors, wind mills and other farm equipment can be seen. Parched and barren land, desolated roads and houses can be seen.
Narrator, Lewis Nordyke, recalls seeing farm families passing through Dalhart, Texas, on their way West, to escape the dust bowl and start anew in California. Farmers and their families traveling in trucks. They stop and make camp for the night. Two farmers in conversation. Woman feeding a baby. Woman drying clothes. Girl sleeping. Journey starts again, with trucks piled high with belongings driving on roads. A sign marked with 'Arizona Welcomes You' can be seen as they pass through the Inspection office. Entering California, a board marked 'Needles welcome You to California'. Farmers go through inspection process in California.
Trucks and cars on roads in America going west during the Great Depression. The vehicles are laden down with lots of gear and possessions as people migrate westward in search of work and better conditions during the Great Depression. One unusual view shows a car towing a covered wagon. Two men walking west on road with their baggage. Logging men or lumberjacks cutting a giant tree into logs of wood and floating the logs down a river to a sawmill. Two men working in the sawmill as the giant sawblade cuts the logs into lumber. Aerial view of little activity at the Portland Lumber Mills of Portland Oregon, as the Depression cut into business. Abandoned sawmills in disrepair. A man talking to a group of workers seeking jobs. Idle men who are unemployed on a street corner, standing in front of the Julian S Chybke Pharmacist and Chemist shop at the corner of East 13th Avenue and Spokane Avenue in Portland, Oregon. Unemployed men stand together looking dejected and talking. Views of dust storm underway during the Dust Bowl. Farm equipment covered in dust and dirt. A man crossing over dust dunes. A farmer looking at dust bowl devastation, and a woman with her child in a dust ravaged area.
Film opens with montage of rapid images illustrating the outbreak of World War 2 in Europe. Appeals from the Allied powers are described. Shown is a field full of American Martin B-26 bombers ready for shipment abroad. View of men working in a construction site. Towers holding high tension electric supply lines are seen. Products needing electric power for production, such as aluminum and magnesium are shown as ingots in production facilities. View of the Columbia River waters surging along its course. Views of the Bonneville Dam and power plant, and the Grand Coulee Dam. Giant electric generators operating in the hydroelectric plants. Technicians in power plant control rooms, and views of transmission lines and switch yards outside a power plant. A ship under construction at a wartime shipyard. Workers using electric arc welders during ship construction. View of the SS Mormacwren launched 22 May 1942 at the Consolidated Steel Corporation's Wilmington, California yard. Launch on May 22, 1942, of the ship, Irving S. Olds, a Bulk Freighter built by the American Ship Building Co., Lorain, Ohio. (Her launch was coordinated with those of numerous other ocean cargo vessels in yards around the United States, to bolster the national morale, when German submarines were sinking many ships in the Atlantic.) Next, a ladle of molten aluminum, to be used in aircraft manufacture, is seen pouring its contents into ingot molds. Workers dislodge the ingots after cooling. Inside an aircraft plant, men assemble aircraft parts from aluminum. A partially completed medium bomber is towed outside the plant. View of Grand Coulee Dam and of many electrical distribution facilities. Herds of sheep moving across the Grand Coulee Dam to new pastures.
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