00:00If there was a contest for being a bad town, Singapore would be the winner.
00:05And no, I'm not talking about Singapore in Asia.
00:09I'm talking about a small town called Singapore in Michigan, United States that buried itself
00:14because of one simple mistake.
00:18This tiny unlucky settlement was founded in 1837 by O'Shea Wilder.
00:24He had a dream to build a town and did just that.
00:27But he definitely didn't know how the city would end.
00:31After the first year, it struggled economically.
00:34But soon after, it found its path in lumber work.
00:37At its finest, it had a population of 300 people.
00:42In 1842, the city experienced a pretty hard winter.
00:46Its inhabitants were left with no food and no way of surviving.
00:50But by some miracle, they found a ship that had recently sunk near the town's coasts.
00:55Luckily, the ship was packed to the brim with all kinds of food.
00:59They also had one of the best lighthouses, but not for long because it fell down and
01:03got destroyed in a few years.
01:06People didn't restore it, saying that they didn't need one despite being a hotspot for
01:10ships.
01:11That's nice of them.
01:13Then a couple of years later, everything started going downhill, and half of the Midwest burned
01:18in a big fire.
01:20Surrounding towns turned into ashes, but this place remained intact.
01:25Trees were burned in the surrounding towns, but Singapore had an untouched forest ready
01:30to be harvested.
01:32They began cutting trees, particularly the white pine tree.
01:35This, of course, busted the town's economy.
01:38As we all know, cutting a lot of trees is pretty bad.
01:42But nobody could predict what would happen next, unless they were experts in dunes.
01:49The location of Singapore was unique.
01:51On the left side, they had a lovely beach by Lake Michigan.
01:55In front of them, there was a river, and everything else was a forest.
01:59But the most critical part of the town was the forest near the beach, which was sitting
02:03on top of sand dunes.
02:05I don't know if you know this, but trees don't usually grow in sand, but I guess this place
02:09was special.
02:11These dunes weren't like those typical ones in the Sahara or any other desert.
02:15Such dunes can only be found near the ocean or, in this rare case, on the coast of Lake
02:19Michigan.
02:20This formation can be more than 4,000 years old and as tall as 196 feet.
02:28Their formation is a pretty simple process.
02:30The river that enters the lake carries tons of sand.
02:34Then the sand is distributed all over the beach by waves.
02:37Later, it dries out and is blown by the wind, but not far.
02:41It's caught by all kinds of vegetation.
02:44And voila!
02:45You have a sand dune!
02:46This process has been heavily studied by scientists, and it's been concluded that plants
02:50play an essential role here.
02:53They stabilize the dunes by preventing the sand from being blown out, and the roots help
02:57the sand not to fall apart.
03:00Plus, they hold water, and if you've ever made a sand castle, you know wet sand doesn't
03:05fall apart.
03:07If only the Singaporeans had known this before starting their tree-cutting business!
03:14Plants develop in a couple of stages.
03:17The first stage is called pioneers.
03:19Some plants begin the dune-building process, but over time, they perish and become food
03:24for the next generation of plants, which is called scrub.
03:28In this category, tiny trees and vines are extremely vulnerable but important for what
03:33comes next.
03:35If everything goes right, a rare thing in sandy areas will grow – a forest!
03:40This stage of plants is so unusual in such regions that it can only be seen in the US
03:45on the Atlantic coast or near Lake Michigan.
03:50Forests like the one in Singapore are one in a million because they mostly consist of
03:54white pine trees.
03:55That's one of the best woods for lumber!
03:58Now let me tell you a little secret.
04:00Those pines were the only thing keeping the sand dunes in place.
04:04Well, after they'd cut down all the trees on the dunes, the Singaporeans realized they
04:08had made a massive mistake.
04:11After not so much time, the sand got dry, and guess what?
04:15The wind started carrying it right into the town!
04:18In a panic, they somehow moved their houses onto logboats, took them downriver, and unloaded
04:23them in the next town, Sagata.
04:26Some of the houses are still in use now!
04:29Some people were either stubborn or couldn't load their giant houses on logs, and they
04:34stayed in the town.
04:36A family lived in a three-story house, and as the wind blew, the house was slowly getting
04:41covered with sand.
04:42They moved upstairs as the floors beneath them became unavailable.
04:46Eventually, they ran out of floors.
04:49Instead of Santa Claus coming down their chimney, they got a pile of sand.
04:54And when that happened, they finally decided to move out of Singapore.
04:58In 1894, the city was officially declared a ghost town.
05:03This is not an isolated case.
05:05Many houses are getting buried now!
05:07People are paying tons of money to remove sand from their homes, and most cases occur
05:12around Lake Michigan.
05:13There are also a few in Africa.
05:16The Sahara Dunes can move and cover the whole of Europe!
05:20You might be wondering what's going on in Singapore today.
05:23Basically, it's a big pile of sand with a sign that says there is a whole town underneath.
05:29The sand preserves around 37 houses.
05:32Maybe one day, archaeologists will find the town and dig it out, restoring it once again
05:37in its final glory.
05:39But people who live there said that it was not worth the effort.
05:43Many building projects have been proposed there.
05:45But historians believe the town is important from a historical perspective and are against
05:50building anything there.
05:52Whatever they do, let's hope they won't cut the trees down again.
05:57We can all agree that what happened in Singapore is terrible for people.
06:01But unfortunately, it's not the only occurrence of its kind in the US.
06:06This time, trees and dunes had nothing to do with it.
06:10The next phenomenon, called the Dust Bowl, covered a large area simultaneously affecting
06:15a few states – Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.
06:21The first people who saw the land around these states weren't too happy about it and said
06:25it wasn't good for farming because it was too dry.
06:28They even called it the Great American Desert since there wasn't any water or trees over
06:33there.
06:34Some people took it as a challenge and stayed there.
06:37They believed it would eventually rain and the land would magically become fertile.
06:42It happened in the 1900s, and many new machines helping farmers with their work were being
06:46developed.
06:48Unfortunately, they overworked the land in the next 30 years, making it even drier.
06:54And yeah, the rain they had been hoping for never arrived.
06:57Instead, a big drought occurred.
07:00It lasted for 10 years, which further worsened the situation.
07:04More than 1 million acres were affected by this colossal Dust Bowl.
07:09The drought worsened yearly, and eventually, the topsoil turned into dust blown around
07:15by the wind, covering houses everywhere.
07:18The dust even reached Washington, D.C.
07:21But not all hope was lost since people started trying to revive the land.
07:26The Civilian Conservation Corporation began planting around 200 million trees from Texas
07:32to Canada to prevent the soil from being blown out.
07:36Farmers began implementing new techniques like crop rotation that helped retain water.
07:41Authorities even started paying farmers to start working on the land to improve the condition
07:46further.
07:48All this hard work started paying off, and by the 1930s, the dust blowing was reduced
07:53by as much as 65%.
07:55But since 75% of the topsoil has already been displaced, it took another 8 to 10 years for
08:02the region to fully recover.
08:05That's it for today!
08:07So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your
08:12friends!
08:13Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!
Comments