The 1936 North American heat wave was the most severe heat wave in the modern history of North America. It took place in the middle of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and caused catastrophic human suffering and an enormous economic toll. The death toll exceeded 5,000, and huge numbers of crops were destroyed by the heat and lack of moisture. Many state and city record high temperatures set during the 1936 heat wave still stand to this day. The heat wave followed one of the coldest winters on record.
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“By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand,
Lonely from the beginning of time until now!
Trees fall, the grass goes yellow with autumn.”
—Li Po (701–762)
“Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,—not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us—the Irish!”
—Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906)
“Whoever the last true cowboy in America turns out to be, he’s likely to be an Indian.”
—William Least Heat Moon [William Trogdon] (b. 1939)
“I hear
the tide turning. Last
eager wave over-
taken and pulled back
by first wave of the ebb.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)