Texas

A lot of that dust blew around in the Texas Panhandle. I remember reading that Dalhart (a town north-northwest of Panhandle city Amarillo) was just about ground zero for the dust.

Yeah, there were (mostly poor) Texans driven out of the Panhandle by the drought and the dust storms.

Also, overgrazing was only partially responsible for the Dustbowl. A lot of the Panhandle had been grassland for thousands of years before the area was settled by Euro-Americans. Those grasslands were sold and plowed up for wheat fields by speculators hoping to cash in on the fact that the Russian and Ukrainian wheat fields had had sharp production declines thanks to the Bolshevik Revolution and its Stalinist aftermath.

Panhandle wheat production was great for a few years while rain was adequate. Then there was a drought and the plowed-up bare earth took flight. Hence the “Dust Bowl.”

The Dust Bowl was caused by people ignoring local climate conditions and letting “free market” ideology override experience and common sense.