1935 - Environment

Environment

Dust storms in western states stop highway traffic, close schools, and turn day into night.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) created in 1933 reaches its peak enrollment of 500,000.

An earthquake in Taiwan (Formosa) April 29 leaves 3,280 dead; a quake at Quetta in western India (Baluchistan) May 31 kills between 30,000 and 50,000. The quake measures 7.5 on the new Richter scale, devised by Ohio-born California Institute of Technogy seismologist Charles F. (Francis) Richter, 35, with help from German-born Caltech physicist Beno Gutenberg, 46. Their scale measures the intensity of earthquakes by recording ground motion in seismographs; each increase of one number means a 10-fold increase in magnitude (the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 is judged to have been a quake of 8.3 on the scale—10 times greater than a quake of 7.3); a second earthquake in Taiwan July 16 measures 6.5 on the Richter scale and kills 2,700.

Former Los Angeles city engineer William Mulholland dies in self-imposed seclusion at his L.A. home in July at age 87, never having recovered from his grief over the loss of life when the St. Francis Dam gave way 7 years ago. His name will be honored in a scenic road atop the Santa Monica Mountains, a grade school in the San Fermando Valley, and a fountain near Griffith Park.

The hurricane that strikes the Florida Keys September 2 carries winds that will be estimated to be as strong as 180 miles per hour, the strongest ever to hit the United States.

Shenandoah National Park created December 26 by act of Congress occupies 193,593 acres in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains set aside for the purpose in 1926. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. has used matching funds to encourage North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia to preserve the Blue Ridge; the new park provides vistas of the Piedmont and the Shenandoah Valley.