1874: "The Grasshopper Invasion"

During the 1870's, swarms of grasshoppers flew and munched their way across many western states, creating major disasters for the homesteaders in the region. This account comes from Gage County in southeastern Nebraska, but reflects the reality and struggle of many settlers in this natural phenomenon that produced a farming disaster on the American plains. 

No less than seven invasions are known to have occurred in southeastern Nebraska before the last, in 1874. They were much alike. In a few instances the corn crop was far enough advanced to escape total destruction, but in the great invasion of 1874 not a green thing escaped. The leaves on the trees, prairie grass, and herbage of every description were practically laid waste. The first intimation of disaster would be a few rapidly dropping hoppers out of the sky, mere avant couriers of the myriads of destroying locusts. The observer, glancing toward the sun, behold the air to a depth of half a mile or more thick with the flying insects, moving with the wind and glittering in the sunshine like flakes of snow. A slight change of the high-wafting breeze or a slackening of its force, caused an immediate descent of the whole dense mass to the ground, and the whole earth, as in biblical times, was covered by hopping, flying, creeping, climbing, crawling locusts, and every edible thing perished.

Here in Gage county up to July 16, 1874, crops of every description had never held greater promise. Fall wheat and oats were already harvested, or well matured, but on that day a devastating hot wind swept up from the soutwest and the corn crop was blasted in a few hours. The grasshopper invasion which followed in the early part of August left the fields practically bare. All Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, and the territories of Wyoming, Dakota, and Idaho were involved in the disaster. In most of this territory the crops, gardens, and orchards were in flourishing condition; everything was sweptaway. This invasion marks an era in the history of the states affected and in the lives of all their inhabitants, a never to be forgotten circumstance. It was the same story everywhere — destruction on a tremendous scale. It was the most startling plague of locusts of which we have any account outside of the Bible. Combined with the drought, this scourage was the cause of the great destitution in Nebraska. On the 8th day of September, 1874, Governor Robert W. Furnas, by proclamation, appointed twenty prominent Nebraskans as a relief commission to receive and distribute all contributions of money and clothing in aid of those who had been, through no fault of thier own, practically reduced to beggary. These gentlemen formed a corproation known in our history as the Nebraska Relief and Aid Society. This society proceeded to organize the work throughout the state. It was estimated in January, 1874, that more than ten thousand people of our commonwealth were in need of aid. In the frontier counties the suffering was acute and often pitiful, but a great many benevolent persons interested themselves in the cause of relief and much was done by private charity to mitigate the poverty and want of the times. 

By January 8, 1875, the society was able to report the receipt from various sources of $32,279.73 in money and nearly an equal amount in clothing. Early in 1875 congress appropriated thirty thousand dollars in money to be used in the purchase of food supplies and five times that amount for the purchase of clothing, its beneficiences to be distributed to the people of the several states who were sufferers from the grasshopper scourge of 1874. A part of these funds came of course to our state. By far the most practical and noteworthy act within our borders was the passage of a law by the legislature, under date of February 17, 1875, providing for the issuing of state bonds, to the amount of fifty thousand dollars. "For the purpose of providing seed for the citizens of counties devastated by grasshoppers during the year 1874." Most of the counties in the state, including Gage, were beneficiaries of these relieaf meaures, and by these various means thousands of homesteaders were held upon their claims and th the state was spared wholesale desolation in many counties.

Great alarm existed during the winter of 1874-1875, as well as the following spring and early summer, on account of the billions and billions of grasshopper eggs that had been depostied in the ground the previous autumn. The exact facts of the case with respect of the deposition of grasshopper eggs stagger belief. Scarecely an inch of land or a clod of dirt but contained several nests of grasshopper eggs, cloesly packed in a sealed mass about an inch in length, numbering probably one hundred eggs to a package, shaped like and about the size of a small ant egg. When hatching time came in the spring, the sight was simply wonderful. Myriads upon multiplied myriads of small, young hoppers appeared everywhere, so thinck in places upon the rails of the railway tracks as to impeed travel. Words fail to describe adequately the situation. The young hoppers were ravenous. In a large portion of the state every green edible thing disappeared as if by magic. They matured rapidly and by the 20th of May or a little later the young pests got their wings and shape, after a succession of moultings, and became, by an almost instantaneous transition from a mere rusty hopper, a winged insect capable of prolonged flight. The migration began the moment their wings appeared. The young, wingless insects would begin hopping with a wind from the north, when suddenly with a mighty hope their wings would appear, and spreading them, they would sail away southward on the favoring breeze. In a few days all were gone and the replanting of the corn, oats, and gardens began. But on June 15, 1875, a south wind brought them back. Pale, anxious, frightened groups of men gathered in the cities and villages to discuss the situaton, business came to a stand-still and appalling disaster seemed immiment. But Providence had intervened to avert the threatened ruin. It was soon observe that though they had settled in multiplied billions in the fields and gardens, no depredations were committed. An examintion proved that every insect was the victim of more than a single species of parasite, amongst them being a small, yellowish boring beetle, at the base of the wings. None ever again rose in flight. They remained stationary a few days and perished. Here in Gage county, where comparatively little damage had been done to the growing crops by the young hoppers, a cold rain set in the night of their return, and when it was over there was not a live grasshopper to be found. Their bodies were washed, by wagon loads, into the draws, frequently damming them and impeding the flow of surface water from the rain. This was the last of the much and justly dreaded grasshopper scourges. More than two score years have elapsed since the appearance of this strange and distructive imgratory insect, and the state of Nebraska has become rich and powerful, but the man who was living in Nebraska in 1874 weathered a scourage of locust greater than that of Pharoah. 

Source:

History of Gage County, Nebraska by Hugh Jackson Dobbs (Lincoln: Western Publishing and Engraving Company, 1918), pages 53-55. Accessed through Archive.org