A. Justify your choice of the two most significant environmental/geographic factors that contributed to the development or expansion of the United States.

I am choosing the Gold Rush and the Dust Bowl as my two significant factors that have contributed to the development or expansion of the US.

The Dust Bowl. In the middle of the 19th century many people were traveling across the US looking for land to farm and make homes on. When they reach the Midwest they thought they had found paradise. The grass was tall and rich all the way from Canada to Texas. Men started to clear the land and started planting crops of wheat. The most ideal was the Southern Plains. The only down side was once the trees and grass was removed the top soil had nothing to hold it into place. The water from the ground that would have gone to the roots of the trees and grass flowed into nearby water ways, such as creeks and rivers. The southern plains were the place to be in the 1930’s. They grew wheat which the government was paying top dollar for because of World War I. The wheat and corn was used to help feed the soldiers and other countries as well as many Americans. In the summer of 1931 a great drought hit the southern plains, turning the once fertile ground into dry brittle dirt. But the lack of water was not the only reason the ground was so dry. The farming practices at that time were depleting the soil of all the nutrients needed to help crops grow. The drought did not stop farms from continuing to try and grow crops. They hoped that the rain would come any day. The lack of rain caused the slightest wind to carry the top layer of soil with it causing severe dust storms. Millions of acres of the plains in the south were turning into what looked like dessert lands. The five states that were most affected by this was Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New