In the midst of the Dust Bowl—an agricultural catastrophe that decimated crops and devastated the livelihoods of thousands of Oklahomans—President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned, “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” Fueled by a lack of understanding about sustainable land management and the heightened demand for food during World War I, once-fertile plains were transformed into barren deserts—a tragedy immortalized in Dorothea Lange’s iconic “Migrant Mother” photograph and John ...