The XIT Ranch

The XIT ranch in the Texas Panhandle was legendary. A Chicago syndicate took the government up on an offer of free land to build the statehouse. It stocked the land with cattle, built windmills to pump water and erected fences. The XIT ranch became the biggest ranch in the world. Towns sprung up around the ranch and there were plenty of jobs for cowboys. Later, when the dust storms came, the syndicate sold the land to farmers promising them that they could turn the grassland into farmland. The farming of this farmland was one of the leading causes of the development of the Dust Bowl.

The Dust Bowl

The vast area of the southern High Plains that was severely impacted by a drought in the 1930s became known as the Dust Bowl. The top soil had been blown away in a majority of the region...