“In the dry places, men begin to dream. Where the rivers run sand, there is something in man that begins to flow. West of the 98th Meridian–where it sometimes rains and it sometimes doesn’t–towns, like weeds, spring up when it rains, dry up when it stops. But in a dry climate the husk of the plant remains. The stranger might find, as if preserved in amber, something of the green life that was once lived there, and the ghosts of men who have gone on to a better place. The withered towns are empty, but not uninhabited. Faces sometimes peer out from the broken windows, or whisper from the sagging balconies, as if this place–now that it is dead–has come to life. As if empty it is forever occupied.”
~Wright Morris, Novelist and Photographer
The summer of 1931 was a particularly hard one for the working men of Webster County, NE. Having to contend with endless days of wind and dust, farmers, machinists, and shopkeepers alike struggled to keep the dirt and grit out of their daily activities. For machinists, the challenge was a nothing short of overwhelming. According to one longtime resident, “We worked just as many hours keeping our machines cleans as we did actually working at what we were supposed to be doing–it was like there was dust and devils everywhere you turned. I’d never want to go through that again.”
Remnants of a time long-gone, Webster County, NE
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