FEARS OF THE SUMMER

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 22 April 1935, Page 7

FEARS OF THE SUMMER

“This Country Will be a Living Hell” TREK FROM NORTH DAKOTA SETTLERS’ SPIRIT BROKEN

(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph Copyright,; WASHINGTON, April ltt. A competent observer who has just returned to Oklahoma City after a 1000 miles journey through the dustdesolated areas >qf Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and New Mexico declares that the inhabitants of the sector mostly fear the coming summer. One great ranch owner said, “This country will be a living hell when the hot winds of summer come. The hot blasts - of July and August and this eternally blowing sand will drive us out if they do not kill us.”

“Residents of the sector are moving out by scores,” the observer said, “and hundreds of others are expected to follow in the next two months. The hardy pioneer spirit that brought them to the high plains country and kept them there during the years of bitter struggle has finally been broken. ‘ ‘The people pray for rain and grass, yet heavy rains would make bad lands out of the plains. Few have any faith in the Government’s attempts to control the dust. Two years of propitious weather might see grass started again, although in some places even alpha grass, which is considered the hardest has been killed by root exposure. “Another rainless and windy summer will depopulate the dust country. Millions on millions of acres are drifted with sand. What I saw was utter desolation from horizon to horizon.” Driven from their homes by dust storms, a caravan of North Dakota farmers, men, women, and children, was heading west to-day seeking new homes “where dust does not blow.” They hoped to find work and sites for homes in Western Montana or Idaho.

There were 125 persons in the caravan. They stated that they would be followed by others from their community, including merchants and tradesmen. Their decision to make the trek, they said, came after three continuous and particularly virulent days of gale-driven grime in which life was both unsafe and unbearable.

Heavy rains to-day broke the drought and settled the dust in the Panhandle district of Texas. Downpours were reported throughout most of the State, with the fall extending through south-western Oklahoma.