THE FIRST NEW DEAL ★^827500
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THE TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY
A map showing the reach of the Tennessee Valley Authority, covering all or parts of seven
southeastern states. Numerous reservoirs and power plants dot the landscape.
landowning farmers not to grow crops encouraged the eviction of thousands of
poor tenants and sharecroppers. Many joined the rural exodus to cities or to the
farms of the West Coast.
The onset in 1930 of a period of unusually dry weather in the nation’s
heartland worsened the Depression’s impact on rural America. By mid- decade,
the region suffered from the century’s most severe drought. Mechanized agri-
culture in this semiarid region had pulverized the topsoil and killed native
grasses that prevented erosion. Winds now blew much of the soil away, creating
the Dust Bowl, as the affected areas of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and Colorado
were called. A local newspaper described the situation in Cimarron County,
Oklahoma: “Not a blade of wheat; cattle dying on the range, ninety percent of
the poultry dead because of the sand storms, milk cows gone dry.” One storm
in 1934 carried dust as far as Washington, D.C. The drought and dust storms
displaced more than 1 million farmers. John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of
What were the major policy initiatives of the New Deal in the Hundred Days?