In the 1930s, giant dust storms swept across the American Great Plains. Farmland topsoil blew away in thick black clouds. Some of it reached as far as Washington, D.C. This disaster is now called the Dust Bowl. To fight it, the federal government did something big: it planted a living wall of trees across the middle of the country. According to research by Sarah Karle, Laura Weakly, and Gary Bentrup, hosted by the US Forest Service, nearly 220 million tree seedlings were planted. That effort led to 18,600 miles of tree rows called shelterbelts on 240,000 acres on 30,000 farms.
Here is the story of that project, and why researchers are now digging through 90-year-old paperwork to bring it back to life.
