As the Dust Bowl settled down in the 1940s, a new storm was brewing for the nation as World War II created what many have called the "Greatest Generation" and threw virtually the entire world into chaos. No one was left untouched, including the homesteaders of the Great Plains. At the start of the war, young men were called to serve Uncle Sam and had to leave the area, while those who remained worked their farms to help provide food for the troops, support their own families, and assist neighbors whose husbands or sons had gone to fight. As the war ended and the men returned home, they helped bring significant changes in national and local economies as well as local farming practices. When they had left for war, the horse was still an important part of farming operations, but with the drought and advances in machinery, farm work horses had all but disappeared from the area. In the post-war economy, wheat prices rose and farms became larger, and many farmers used profits from wheat harvests to buy land that had been abandoned during the Depression as a radical change in farming practices loomed that forever changed the landscape of agriculture.