The way some ranchers got through it was, you’d load up some cattle, sheep, or goats and sell them for whatever a truckload of feed would cost. MERTZ: I’ve never seen jackrabbits like there were during the drought [because they adapted to the dry, overgrazed terrain better than other wildlife]. Some towns went bone-dry and had to haul in water by truck or rail. MAYO: The farmers had their guns, and they would walk in lines across certain fields and kill the rabbits in front of them. You weren’t trying to fatten ’em, you were trying to survive. But poor soil-conservation practices left the topsoil vulnerable, and when the rains ceased, the wind blew the land into the sky. Every day, men and women watched the sky for clouds. (During a normal year, an average of around thirty inches falls.) Texans expect drought. It will enhance any encyclopedic page you visit with the magic of the WIKI 2 technology. The Statues Are Coming Down. I had to ride in the back of the pickup the rest of the day because my brother didn’t want that molasses all over the truck. So we would fill up some barrels and get that molasses hot and drive around putting it out. 1950s Drought (03:31 ) Original Airdate: December 6 (2011) This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. But the 1950s drought is still considered the “drought of record” in Texas. Thank you for taking your time to send in your valued opinion to Science X editors. Intermittent January rains gave way to downpours in February, which continued through the spring and summer seasons. [14], The 1950s drought remains to be a model for water-conservation plans in the present day, with Texas water authorities using the effects of the drought's severity to create water plans. How Scared Should I Be. The threat of drought also inspired forward-thinking policies in San Antonio to encourage people to turn off the tap. It was so disheartening because we needed it so bad, and everybody kept saying, “It’s gonna rain. Since then, the state's climate has mostly been similar to today's, with the exception of some wetter and drier periods. But as the largest permit holder of precious Edwards Aquifer water, SAWS has also upset people in other counties who depend on the aquifer. But whenever the government went to pay more, the producers just raised the price of the feed. They had a pump up on Bluff Creek and pumped water here to town. Texas State Park police officer Thomas Bigham walks across the cracked lake bed of O.C. It’s just bad. NUNNS: Junction was a rather self-contained community. But there’s probably four or five of. [9], As a result of the devastating drought of the 1950s, the number of Texas farms and ranches shrank from 345,000 to 247,000, and the state's rural population declined from more than a third of the population to a quarter. An acre-foot provides enough water for two families annually. The most recent drought was the first real test of extended water restrictions in San Antonio, Guz said, and she had no idea how residents would react. Otherwise, try again or reset your password. Some towns went completely dry and had to transport water in by truck or rail. It was a scorching drought that plagued the state day after day for seven long, blistering years from 1950 to 1957 — and it started even earlier in some parts of the state. https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/when-the-sky-ran-dry/. Nielsen-Gammon said the severity of the future dryness will likely depend on local circumstances. This led to persistent dust storms that rivaled those during the Dust Bowl. “Eisenhower tramped the Southwestern drought lands on Monday and promised on the part of the government that ‘everybody will do his best’ to provide drought relief,” wrote a reporter for the Associated Press. “Our house wasn’t sealed tight and dust would come in through the walls,” said Herman Kellner Jr., 76, a rancher from Fashing about an hour’s drive south of San Antonio. By the summer of 1951, the entire state was in drought. Struggling Texas Farmers Thought Hemp Might Save Them. Like a lot of our neighbors, we had a flock of chickens and a calf in the back yard. JOE DAVID ROSS, 76, is a retired veterinarian who opened his practice in 1959, treating ranch animals in the counties spread across the southwest portion of the Edwards Plateau. I spent the night there at his invitation. [4] In 1956, the New York Times reported that more than 100,000 Texans were receiving surplus “federal food commodities. [4], The situation became so dire that the US government began distributing emergency feed supplies to desperate farmers. Comparing measurements from the J-17 well that shows the daily aquifer level for San Antonio, Guz found that water levels in the drought of 2011-2015 mirrored the 1950s. In the rural areas the suffering was akin to a biblical plague. Or would the restrictions become the new norm here? Drifting dust and sand, reminders of drought, pile up a sand dune 10 feet high behind the house of L.R.Riney, a dry land farmer 16 miles southeast of Brownfield in the heart of the Texas’ drought-stricken country in 1953. When you ran out of livestock, you didn’t buy any more feed. It wasn’t but peter-deep. We took butter and eggs to market as well. During this time period, Texans experienced the second, third and eighth-driest single years ever in the state – 1956, 1954 and 1951, respectively. [2], Towns suffered from the drought as well, though it was different from the struggles of farmers. As the dry years dragged by, would they resent the once-a-week restrictions on using sprinklers to water lawns? ”. Kind of depressing. They’re part of the family just like everybody else. Its reservoirs got so low that water had to be pumped down from the Red River, whose high salt content fouled pipes, choked landscape plants, and threatened kidney patients. The ‘Country Queers’ Podcast Challenges Preconceptions About Rural Areas. MERTZ: I’ve been in business all these years, and I can nearly say that anything that can happen has happened to me. "West Texas seems most likely to get a double whammy: decreased rainfall and increased temperatures," Nielsen-Gammon said. [3][9], On January 13, 1957, President Eisenhower and Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson visited San Angelo as part of a six-state inspection tour of the drought. It was a bad time. Leave them blank to get signed up. “It didn’t grow much of anything.”. Climate change is going to make that depletion happen a little bit faster, but the decline of the Ogallala Aquifer is primarily caused by water extraction for irrigation rather than by climate change.". The 2011 brought a record heat wave to Texas. That’s exactly what it was. But it saved those trees. The Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, where Votteler works, complained that basing plans on a less severe historical drought could increase pumping from the Edwards Aquifer. EMILY PENDERGRASS, 82, was a young mother living on a farm outside Winters. I didn’t think it was fair for them to water when the rest of us had to ration water. Horses are seen looking for food in Piedras Negas, Mexico, during the drought in 1988. Intermittent January rains gave way to downpours in February, which continued through the spring and summer seasons. ROSS: In any drought, you don’t want to sell out too soon, and yet you don’t want to abuse the land [through overgrazing]. Then she took us into the garage and we West Texas is especially prone to drought or even megadrought conditions, according to the report. The drought was a hundred times worse. The combined income of Texas farmers fell by one fifth from the previous year, and the price of low-grade beef cattle dropped from 15 to 5 cents a pound. We report on vital issues from politics to education and are the indispensable authority on the Texas scene, covering everything from music to cultural events with insightful recommendations. By the summer of 1951, the entire state was in drought. My little brother hid under the sink in the bathroom because he was afraid of the rain. The state created the Texas Water Development Board in 1957, which set into motion a number of water conservation plans. And he said, "You go back to that campus, and you get a good well dug and a good submersible pump or whatever kind of pump you think you need, and you start irrigating those trees." She is Charles Hagood’s sister. Mama wet down towels and we laid them on the In some parts of West Texas, the dry period began in the late forties; elsewhere, it seemed to start in 1950. From 1947 to 1957, groundwater use increased fivefold. "These include ones such as, does it matter what time of year sees increases or decreases in precipitation? ", "And they were dying. They used the “gray water” to water pecan trees and fruit trees in the yard. It Became Home. The researchers found the message is clear: Texas is getting hotter and drier, and the time to take action is now. The drought triggered these alterations. As one year turned into the next without appreciable rainfall, West Texas stockmen realized they were in a severe drought, similar to the one their fathers had weathered in the thirties and the one their grandfathers had endured in 1917. “The Lord is a pretty good feller,” goes one old joke, recorded in Rana Williamson’s When the Catfish Had Ticks, a collection of drought humor. People that irrigated had a rough go of it because they did not have enough water to cover a situation like the drought. Since then, Texas has faced several droughts, including its most recent and severe drought, which began in the fall of 2010 and lasted through winter 2014/2015. Austin Lake in the 1950s. There wasn’t much difference between the street and the yard. Alva Stem, former director of Waco Parks and Recreation, recalls the attempts to maintain Lover's Leap during the drought: "There wasn't any water out there from anywhere until we ran a two-inch water line from North Nineteenth and Park Lake Drive out to Lover's Leap. Across Texas, at least one thousand communities enforced some type of water restrictions. During this time period, Texans experienced the second, third and eighth-driest single years ever in the state – 1956, 1954 and 1951, respectively. “The most withering, costly, prolonged and heartbreaking drought in the memory of men now living has put its searing brand upon a belt of territory almost 1,000 miles wide extending from eastern Colorado and western Kansas all the way down to the Rio Grande on the Texas-Mexican border,” wrote author Stanley Walker in an Aug. 27, 1956, newspaper column for the New York Herald-Tribune. The area from the Texas panhandle to central and eastern Colorado, western Kansas and central Nebraska experienced severe drought conditions. That was just a memorable event when that big rain came. Texas policy makers have developed water projections and conservation plans for decades, but these fall short in many areas, the study concluded. “The bottom line is, you see these other droughts that are much worse and were longer than the ’50s drought,” Votteler said. Enter your email below to send a password reset email. Furthermore, water supply planning in the state became ineffective and failed since there was no water to be supplied to homes. He ran sixty animals to a section, and I guarantee if you run fifteen to twenty animals now you’re about to the limit of it.

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