The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. It was caused by a combination of drought, poor land management practices, and strong winds that carried away the topsoil. The term "Dust Bowl" originally referred to the geographical area affected by the dust, but today it usually refers to the event itself. The drought and erosion of the Dust Bowl affected 100 million acres (400,000 km2) that centered on the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma Panhandle and touched adjacent sections of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. The Dust Bowl has come to symbolize the hardships of the entire nation during the 1930s.

The Dust Bowl was not a single event, but rather several distinct events occurring in rapid succession that affected regions were not able to recover adequately before another drought began. The regions exposed topsoil, robbed of the anchoring water-retaining roots of its native grasses, was carried off by heavy spring winds, causing "black blizzards" of windblown soil that blocked out the sun and piled the dirt in drifts. Thousands of families were forced to leave the Dust Bowl at the height of the Great Depression in the early and mid-1930s. Many of these displaced people undertook the long trek to California in search of work.

The Dust Bowl had a significant impact on the arts and culture of the time, with authors such as John Steinbeck writing about the flight of families from the Dust Bowl in his book "The Grapes of Wrath". Despite the hardships faced by those living in the Dust Bowl, historian Mathew Bonnifield argued that its long-term significance was "the triumph of the human spirit in its capacity to endure and overcome hardships and reverses".