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Empire of Dust

© Paula E. Kirman

Dustbowls and desolate, cracked and barren farmland is a frequent image of the Great Depression. The town of Alderson, Alberta became a wasteland, thanks to over-expansion, which led to drought and the mass exodus of farmers from this once-plentiful farmland.

David C. Jones chronicles the fateful history of the Alderson/Carlestadt areas in Empire of Dust: Settling and Abandoning the Prairie Dry Belt (University of Alberta Press). Now in its second edition, Jones traces the history that led to farming expansion at a rate that was faster than the land could handle, and ultimately led to the area's destruction.

"I studied the history of a ghost town, the town of Molson, Washington, near where I grew up in the Okanagan Valley, and I discovered that it collapsed mostly in the 1920s," says Jones of what drew him to this topic. "When I returned to Alberta (I was born here), I began studying the communities in the South East, and I realized that a great disaster had occurred here in the 1920s and continuing into the 1930s."

Jones, who is a professor of history in Calgary, says that it took him about ten years to research the original version of the book. Repackaged with a new preface, he utilized a wide variety of research tools and sources, which include local newspapers, climate records, letters in the Provincial and Federal Archives, interviews, and much more. "Basically, one tries to look at everything that has survived," he explains.

The first edition of Empire of Dust was published in 1987, and the need for a second edition was obvious, especially after the original publisher decided not to reprint again. "The book was seen by historians and others as a sort of classic in the literature of the Canadian Prairies and the Great Plains of the United States," says Jones. "Walter Hildebrandt, director of the U of C Press, encouraged me to do another edition, adding a new preface to bring the work up to date."

In fact, since Empire of Dust was first published, Jones has written something of a sequel, Feasting on Misfortune - Journeys of the Human Spirit in Alberta's Past, published in 1998 by the University of Alberta Press. "It tried to answer the question of what people did with all the misinformation and misery," Jones says.

When it comes to Empire of Dust, Jones' goal included writing about his chosen topic with literary pizzazz. He says that he wanted, "to tell a good story, to combine three rich forms in the writing of history - the academic, the popular, and the literary.

The copyright of the article Empire of Dust in Canadian Literature is owned by Paula E. Kirman. Permission to republish Empire of Dust in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.