Back in 2018, I watched the Ken Burns documentary The Dust Bowl on our local Maryland PBS station, WMPT. As a historian, I knew about the Dust Bowl and the disaster it caused on the American prairie, but Ken Burns’ documentary put it in perspective. The images of rolling black clouds of dust engulfing small Midwest towns really impressed me. Given the recent spate of tornadoes throughout the Midwest in the past month, I was reminded of the Dust Bowl. I thought about the national banks involved and how dear money must have been in those days. I started looking into the areas hardest hit by the Dust Bowl to pick up a “Dust Bowl National Bank Note.” I settled on one from Dalhart, Texas.
Dalhart is the only
