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Joseph Gladden Hutton, a professor who served in South Dakota State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts' agronomy department between 1911 and 1939, was the college's first soil scientist and saw trouble brewing long before the drought took hold.

The year was 1936, and South Dakotans were struggling. The heat was miserable. The winters even worse. Cracks split the bone-dry soil wide open. Dust was everywhere — even in bed sheets and in what little food there was. Plague-level grasshopper swarms ate hanging laundry, fence posts and the few plants that grew.

It was the middle — and worst year — of what historians would come to call "The Dust Bowl," the greatest ecological disaster in North American history and a period in which South Dakota suffered immensely. The United States was also in the midst of a financial depression, and South Dakota was feeling the worst of it. Farm incomes, already low, had dropped by 60% in the years following the 1929 crash. To make matters worse, the Great Plains was in the midst of a decades-long drought, and 1936 tracked to be the driest year on record. Journalist Lorena Hickok, working for the federal government, remarked after visiting South Dakota, "A more hopeless place I never saw."

Times were tough.

Joseph Gladden Hutton was a professor at South Dakota State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now South Dakota State University) who spent the better part of 1935 and 1936 traveling around the state and photographing the nightmarish scenes. His photographs captured the bleakness of the Dust Bowl. Starving cattle whose ribs were visible from the road. Endless oceans of sandy dust where golden wheat fields should have been. Dayslong dust storms that South Dakotans called "black blizzards."

Despite the grim scenes, Hutton was not surprised. In fact, he had been warning that trouble was brewing in the soil decades prior.

Indiana-born; Illinois-educated

Hutton was born on a farm near Monticello, Indiana, in 1873. His father had fought in the Civil War for the Union Army. His mother was a homesteader. After graduating from Indiana State Normal School in 1899, Hutton taught at a number of rural county schools before eventually becoming a superintendent.

Hutton's life would take a turn in 1910 after listening to a presentation from Cyril Hopkins at the Illinois Academy of Sciences. Hopkins, a graduate of Dakota Agricultural College and a survivor of the 1888 Children's Blizzard, was a pioneer in soil science. He was one of the first to understand the importance of soil fertility and that different soils had different abilities to supply nutrients to plants.

“If the art of agriculture has ruined the land, the science must restore it," Hopkins said.

Hopkins' presentation was a near religious experience for Hutton. Hopkins spoke passionately about soils and described soil conservation as the "greatest material" problem that needed to be solved. Hutton determined — from that presentation — he would take on Hopkins' challenge and devote his life to soil science.

“Some people are converted only to religion, but I was converted to (Hopkins') philosophy of agriculture and have never been a backslider," Hutton said in a 1933 address.

New opportunities in South Dakota

In 1911, Hutton's colleague in Illinois, Albert Hume, was hired by SDSC to lead its agronomy department. Hume was an expert in corn breeding and, like Hutton, was greatly influenced by Hopkins. Soon after taking the job, Hume called his good friend Hutton and offered him a position in the department. Hutton eagerly accepted. Not only did he work well with Hume, but he also felt the position would offer him the academic freedom to take on the soil conservation challenge with his newfound philosophy of agriculture.

At SDSC, Hutton started a soil fertility program and was the state's unofficial expert on soils. One of his first initiatives was to conduct a soil survey. Hutton (correctly) believed that soils were unique and had different characteristics that must be factored into farming practices. Mapping the soils was critical to sustainable farming, Hutton said.

“It is impossible to give trustworthy advice to farmers seeking information concerning these various soil types unless there is some definite reliable information upon which to base such advice," Hutton said in 1913.

Hutton's views on soils were in direct contradiction to common knowledge of the time. Most people viewed soil as nothing more than a limitless resource of broken-up rock. Hutton had more of a spiritual connection with soil and viewed it as the physical basis for life.

“Famine, pestilence and war follow in the wake of depleted soils. These facts have been known since the dawn of civilization, but nevertheless, they do not seem to have received the universal consideration which they deserve," Hutton wrote in a 1937 bulletin. "The soil is our most precious possession."

By the mid-1910s, Hume and Hutton had convinced the South Dakota Legislature to allocate $10,000 each year for the state's first-ever soil survey. Hume was named the director, and Hutton would be the lead scientist, charged with collecting samples and mapping the different soils across the state.

Work began in 1919. Hutton traveled to farms and ranches across the state collecting samples and analyzing them back on campus. He published the results in South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station circulars. The first circular highlighted the importance of nitrogen for growing crops. It also revealed signs of trouble: cultivated soils were severely lacking key nutrients.

“The saving of its soils is, perhaps, the most important duty of a state, for the destiny of its people, its institutions and even the government of the state itself, all depend upon the productivity of its soils," Hutton said in a press release. "Soil saving depends upon accurate information which only a soil survey and experiment fields can supply.”

Roots of depression

South Dakota was primarily an agriculture state in the 1910s. Sure, there were jobs in town, like barbers and shop owners, but those were few and far between. Farming was the singular industry and nearly the entirety of South Dakota's economy.

The 1910s were great economic times for South Dakota's farmers and ranchers. Wheat prices were at an all-time high in 1915 and 1916, and the federal government encouraged farmers to buy more land and equipment so they could produce more food for the growing war effort in Europe. Farmers borrowed money from the bank, convinced the boom would continue. Millions of acres of virgin soil were plowed to depths of 16 inches. The intense plowing removed thousands of acres of grasslands and native plants. As farmers would later learn, native plants — with their deep interconnected roots — were crucial to holding precious topsoil in place.

By the early 1920s, Europe had begun to stabilize, and farmers there were able to resume production of their own crops. This caused the price of wheat to plummet in the U.S. But with the money spent on land and equipment, farmers felt they had no other choice but to grow even more crops. This excess supply crushed rural economies and set off a farm crisis in the 1920s.

The economic downturn had a direct effect on Hutton and his research efforts. By the mid 1920s, Hutton had surveyed around nine South Dakota counties and was learning more and more about the variety of South Dakota's soils. In just one county, Hutton found there could be more than 28 different types of soils. But in 1927, the South Dakota Legislature revoked funds for the state soil survey.

Hutton was frustrated by the state legislature and regularly critiqued its lack of investment in research. Despite this, Hutton continued to warn that the soil would not hold up to the intense plowing and overgrazing common across the state. He continually remarked that the soil was lacking key nutrients and problems were growing. Those warnings fell on mainly deaf ears.

“There are not a few optimists who know little of soils who think that there is no soil problem in South Dakota and that there will not be for 50 or 100 years. Such a belief may be honest, but if such opinion is followed, soil ruin and disaster for the farmer are sure to result," Hutton said in a 1931 address.

Farm radio

The unofficial starting point for the Great Depression is the Wall Street crash in October 1929. But in South Dakota, tough times had already begun. Both the economic depression and the drought had started in the 1920s. Regular rainfall wouldn't return for well over a decade. Agriculture productivity dropped off a cliff. Many farms and ranches foreclosed. Then the banks failed. Nearly a fourth of South Dakota's population migrated out of state.

During this time, Hutton continued to lobby the state legislature for soil survey funding. Hutton believed this information was even more crucial with the ongoing crisis. Instead, Hutton brought his research directly to the farmers and ranchers. A master communicator, he used every medium available at the time — radio, poetry and photography — to spread the gospel of soil conservation. He had his own radio program, broadcasting directly from SDSC's campus. On one particularly prophetic episode of "Soils Talk" in 1929, Hutton predicted South Dakota would see widespread erosion problems if soil conservation practices were not implemented soon.

Hutton was also a prolific speaker whose speeches would discuss far more than just soil conservation. He would connect science and religion in his talks and advocated for women's rights and stricter child labor laws.

Throughout the state and the rest of the Great Plains, things continued to get worse. Dust storms would regularly black out the sky. Farms became buried in dust. Food was hard to come by. Ranchers suffered cataclysmic losses. At one point, the federal government paid ranchers to get rid of their cattle, in hopes of stabilizing livestock prices. Some were fed to the hungry, but far more were shot and buried in massive trenches.

"No one exaggerates (The Dust Bowl)," survivors of that time period said. "There was no way for it to be exaggerated. It was that bad."

By the mid 1930s, things became so bleak the federal government was forced to step in and take action. In 1934, Hutton was recruited to take part in a reconnaissance soil erosion survey as part of the newly formed Soil Erosion Service (now the Natural Resources Conservation Service). This led to the creation of demonstration farms, which showed farmers how different conservation practices could be successfully implemented on their farms.

The federal government also recognized — thanks to the work of Hutton and other soil scientists — that not all land should be farmed. To combat soil erosion, the federal government bought back thousands of acres of "marginal" land that was not suitable for cultivation. This led to the creation of the Fort Pierre and Buffalo Gap National Grasslands in South Dakota, which were restored to permanent grasslands. Today, these grasslands are home to rich mixed-grass prairie and provide ideal habitat for wildlife and livestock grazing.

Hutton's legacy

The Dust Bowl would drag on throughout the 1930s. Unfortunately, Hutton never saw the end. He passed away in September 1939 of heart failure.

While Hutton is a relatively unknown name from the tumultuous Dust Bowl era, his legacy casts a long shadow. In fact, many of the lessons learned from the Dust Bowl continue today in South Dakota. Many farmers adopted the conservation practices Hutton preached about. These efforts drastically helped the state's recovery and prevented similar Dust Bowl-like problems when the drought returned in the 1950s. South Dakota also finished the state soil survey, eventually finding out there are around 500 different types of soils across the state.

Hutton's legacy also lives on at SDSU. Today, the university is nationally known for its cutting-edge precision agriculture program and the roots of precision agriculture can be traced back to both Hutton's and Hopkins' work with the soil survey. Hutton's work is also credited by experts as the basis of modern soil science research nationwide.

“Sometime the people of this great state will realize that saving the soil is second in importance only to saving the soul."

Thanks to Thomas Schumacher (professor emeritus of plant science at SDSU), Gwen McCausland (director of the South Dakota Agricultural Heritage Museum) and Dale Potts (associate professor of history at SDSU) for providing the source material for this article.