Montana Medicine Show: Homestead Bust

Welcome to the Montana Medicine Show. I'm Derrick strong. On the ocker scissor Bill Nestor swarming into a hostile land duped when he started. Rob when he arrived. That's author Joseph Kinsey Howard's description of the Montana homestead or their shacks were made from Grassy slabs of topsoil. They face the blistering heat and subzero cold of Montana's sometimes inhospitable plains homesteader Sioux howls recalled. I have stood in the doorway of our shack with my heart full of loneliness and listened to the wind. It is an incessant screeching whining and screaming wind. And it seems to be heard nowhere except in Montana on the homestead after World War One disaster struck. The However Plain Dealer called the catastrophe the worst in the history of the state. Historian Don spritzer wrote played by blowing dust low crop prices and hordes of insects once optimistic settlers left in droves between 1900 in one thousand twenty five 11000 farms were vacated on one vehicle a

poetic sign read 20 miles from water 40 miles from wood. We're leaving Montana and we're leaving for good. Montana was the only state that lost population during the roaring 1920s and the Great Depression was still to come as historian Dave Walter noted in Montana's litany of boom and bust cycles the homestead era reigned supreme because it involves so many people and so much land. From KGO to studios. I'm Derrick strong. Montana medicine show is supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. A private corporation funded by the American people.