Which event marked the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States?

The crash of the stock market in 1929 is widely recognized as the event that marked the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States. On October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday, the stock market suffered a catastrophic collapse that led to a widespread loss of confidence among investors and drastically impacted the economy. This event caused banks to fail, businesses to close, and unemployment rates to soar, setting off a downward economic spiral that lasted throughout the 1930s.

While other factors such as the Dust Bowl contributed to the economic challenges of the era, they occurred after the initial stock market crash and compounded the already existing economic problems. The formation of the New Deal was a response to the Great Depression, introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in an effort to alleviate the crisis, but it came after the economic downturn had begun. World War I, while significant in its own right, did not serve as a direct cause of the Great Depression itself, but rather laid the groundwork for some of the economic issues that followed in the 1920s and into the 1930s.