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Black Sunday

Friday was the anniversary of Black Sunday, in 1935, the worst dust storm in the Dust Bowl days of the Texas Panhandle. The photo below is of Pampa, Texas on that day.

My parents were married in 1929, after their high school graduation. They farmed outside Friona, Texas, in the western Panhandle, and lived through the Dust Bowl. Friona is in Parmer County, all of which was originally part of the XIT Ranch, sold by the State of Texas to a British syndicate to finance the construction of the state capitol. By the 1930’s the Capitol Land Syndicate had sold off much of the ranch to farmers, with financing. The Syndicate built a hotel in Friona where prospective buyers would stay after arriving on the train. Parmer County did not suffer the out-migration of farmers experienced by much of Oklahoma and North Texas because the Syndicate agreed not to foreclose on farm mortgages if farmers would stay on the land. Other photos of the Dust Bowl can be seen here.

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