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Show 90 with coviboys who were already there driving c a t t l e over the vast, unfenced, open range. The s e t t l e r s claimed that c a t t l e ' s hoofs and appetites denuded the s o i l , vihich vias t r u e , but the farmers also exposed soil to wind erosion vihen they plowed up grass to make way for crops. In the 1930s, a f t e r several seasons of drought, the s o i l began to blow away in parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, so violently that clouds of dust darkened the sky as far away as the Atlantic coast. Thousands of families l e f t the Dust Bowl to move viest; John Steinbeck wrote about them in The Grapes of Wrath. The devastation of the Dust Bowl years led to the concept of range management - viays to keep rangeland from turning into wasteland. By the lQ^Os range management vias an e s t a b l i s h e d science, and courses in it were being taught at u n i v e r s i t i e s. |