The Worst Hard Time

This chapter focuses on the people who are documenting the devastation of the High Plains during the 1930s and 1940s.

Egan introduces Don Hartwell, a farmer in Inavale, Nebraska, who keeps a diary that is eventually archived in a museum. The diary primarily centers around Hartwell's failure to grow corn. Two subsequent chapters, Chapter 22: “Cornhusker I,” and Chapter 24: “Cornhusker II,” also feature this diary.

Roy Stryker, the head of FDR's photography department, sends a team of photographers to the Dust Bowl to get “the record of decay for the files of the Farm Security Administration,” a new FDR agency created to combat rural poverty (248).Stryker's team comes back with photos of abandoned houses and farms, and one iconic picture of a father and son running for cover in a storm that receives national notoriety.

With FDR's approval, Stryker sets up a documentary division in his photo unit and hires Pare Lorentz, who has never made a film but has a vision for a documentary which will show how people destroyed the land on the High Plains. Lorentz decides to film on location instead of in a studio, to save money, and he chooses Dalhart, Texas for the film’s location.