The 1870s were a brutal time for settlers. Rainfall was
erratic, and an entire crop could wither in a single dry summer. Prairie fires
could spread for miles, and high winds stripped topsoil from their farms. If
that wasn’t enough, conflicts with native tribes, outlaws, and claim jumpers
brought violence and tension. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid, smallpox, and
diphtheria were prevalent and often fatal. Homesteaders lived in isolation,
contributing to loneliness and mental strain.
However, it was the summer of 1874 that had farmers pulling
up stakes and heading to other parts of the country. Over 12.5 trillion Rocky
Mountain locusts swarmed the Great Plains, covering over 2,000,000 square miles.
Areas included the Dakota Territory, Montana Territory, Wyoming Territory,
Colorado Territory, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Indian
Territory (present-day Oklahoma), and Texas.
The insects stripped the land bare in hours, devouring
everything green, including wheat, corn, oats, barley, and gardens. Settlers reported
the locusts ate everything, including fence rails, harness leather, laundry on
clotheslines, and wooden tool handles.
With the grass gone, livestock had no feed, so homesteaders sold
off their cattle and horses. To avoid starvation, many settlers abandon their
claims. Wagon after wagon of families moved eastward. Kansas alone lost
approximately one-third of its population, although history shows this number
was short-lived.
The Settlers’ West by Martin F. Schmitt and Dee
Brown, “Homesteaders who refused to quit…were faced with a hard winter. Many
had no money, no credit, no food; some had no fuel or clothing. For the first
time in the nation’s history, the federal government offered relief to farmers.
The Secretary of War issued a ‘grasshopper appropriation’ for the purchase of
food and clothing to be ‘divided among the naked.’ Those funds didn’t last
long.
When the locust returned in 1875, the numbers had declined,
but it was estimated that one swarm was 1,800 miles long and 110 miles wide. It
consumed everything for about 198,000 square miles.
From the Homestead National
Historical Park, “In 1877 the Nebraska Legislature passed the
Grasshopper Act, officially declaring the swarms of locusts a ‘public enemy’.
The Act required all males between the ages of 16-60, when called upon, to
perform two days of service fighting the swarms. If after two days their
service was still needed, they could be forced to continue fighting swarms for
up to ten days. If a person refused to perform the service when called upon,
they were subject to a $10 penalty!”
The Settlers’ West explains, “Minnesota established a
bounty of fifty cents a bushel on the destructive insects. Happy farmers
fastened boxes on their reaper platforms and drove around their fields until
the boxes were full. One farmer who had an abundance of the insects chased his
neighbors with a pitchfork when he discovered them ‘poaching grasshoppers’ on
his land.”
Other states also made bounty offers and settlers attempted
to destroy the locust by several methods. Here’s a photo of a “hopper
dozer” in action. It shows a horse-drawn device dragging a plate coated in coal
tar across flat fields, used to trap locusts during the 1870s plagues.
Between 1873 and 1877, the locusts caused $200 million in
crop damage. “In one year, … the weight of all the bugs in the swarms was estimated
to be more than 27 million tons.”
By the 1880s, the farmers had recovered from the locust
infestation. While the Rocky Mountain locust is extinct today, scientists suggest
many factors may have contributed to its eradication. Some say habitat-altering
plants, insect-eating birds, and farming itself destroyed the locust egg masses.
The last sighting of a living specimen came in southern Canada in 1902.
Resources:
The Settlers’ West by Martin F. Schmitt and Dee
Brown
The 1874 Rocky Mountain Locust Plague That Blotted Out the
Sun by Lou Bodenhemier
1874: The Year of the Locust by Chuck Lyons
Grasshopper Plague of the Great Plains by Kathy Alexander
Homestead
National Historical Park
Wikipedia
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