Locust Plague of 1874

Last updated

Locust Plague of 1874
Kansas farmers versus grasshoppers carte de visite photograph.jpg
1875 cartoon by Henry Worrall depicting Kansas farmers battling giant grasshoppers.
Date1874
Location Great Plains
(United States, Canada)
TypeInfestation
CauseLocusts

The Locust Plague of 1874, or the Grasshopper Plague of 1874, occurred when hordes of Rocky Mountain locusts invaded the Great Plains in the United States and Canada. The locust hordes covered about 2,000,000 square miles (5,200,000 km2) and caused millions of dollars' worth of damage. The swarms were so thick that they could cover the sun for up to six hours.

Contents

Efforts were made to stop the infestation, including eating the locusts. Following the plague, the population of Rocky Mountain locusts continued to decline each year after 1874 and in spring 1875, many of the hatched locust eggs died due to frost, contributing to their eventual extinction.

Area

The locust plague encompassed the Dakota Territory, the Montana Territory, the Wyoming Territory, the Colorado Territory, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, the Indian Territory, and Texas. [1] The locust plague also reached the Northwest Territories and Manitoba; one 1877 observer theorized that a range of coniferous timber prevented them from overtaking some parts of Saskatchewan. While the exact mechanism behind why locust movement is inhibited by coniferous ranges is not known, the locusts were never observed to be able to cross these regions. [2] [3]

The locusts spread out across about 2,000,000 square miles (5,200,000 km2), while a locust infestation named Albert's swarm in 1875 covered 198,000 square miles (510,000 km2). [1] [4] The United States Entomological Commission wrote in 1880 that the infestation "covered a swath equal to the combined areas of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont." [5]

Damage

Plate II from Riley's The locust plague in the United States (1877), showing extent of damage in 1874 Plate II The locust plague in the United States (1877).jpg
Plate II from Riley’s The locust plague in the United States (1877), showing extent of damage in 1874

Compared to previous infestations in the region, the 1874 plague was significantly more damaging. In some cases, the locusts blocked the sun for up to six hours. The locusts were able to breed quickly due to it being hot and dry during the spring and summer. The locusts swarms would pile up to over a foot high and ate crops, trees, leaves, grass, wool off sheep, harnesses on horses, paint from wagons, and pitchfork handles. Drinking water was often all that the farmers could protect.

The locusts ate for several days by eating from the fields and trees, and moved to eating food from inside the farmers' homes. Carpets and clothes were torn apart by the locusts in the process. The excrement from the locusts infected the ponds and streams. [1] Despite livestock eating the locusts and bonfires killing many of them, the estimated 120 billion to 12.5 trillion locusts were not stopped by any of these interventions. [1] [6] [7] Crop damage caused by the locusts cost over $200 million. [8] Migration to the Midwest stopped as a result, causing many travelers to return to their homes in the east or move further to the west. [1] Trains had trouble moving due to the "slippery, gooey mess" of dead locusts. [1] The tracks were "slick with grasshopper guts" which caused the trains to lose traction, according to the book It Happened in Nebraska. [9]

A Kansas pioneer was quoted as saying, "They looked like a great, white glistening cloud, for their wings caught the sunshine on them and made them look like a cloud of white vapor". [10] Another Kansas settler said, "I never saw such a sight before. This morning, as we looked up toward the sun, we could see millions in the air. They looked like snowflakes." [11] Farmers tried killing the locusts with fire and exploding gunpowder, and one case resulted in the locusts smothering out the flames. [1] A device called a hopperdozer was used to attempt to stop the infestation. The hopperdozer had a scraper with coal tar that was pulled by horses on fields, but it only worked on flat ground. This device would be dragged against the wind, and young locusts would be blown into the tar, killing them. [12] [13]

Results

In Kansas, Governor Thomas A. Osborn convinced the legislature to approve $73,000 in bonds for aid and railroads carried supplies for free to Kansas farmers. Other Americans donated barley and corn to the Kansas farmers. [14] In Nebraska, it was required that farmers have no leftover money and nothing left to sell in order to receive assistance from the Nebraska Relief and Aid Association. [7] Entomologist Charles Valentine Riley suggested eating the locusts to get rid of them, including locusts fried in butter and in a soup. [15] Farmers would attempt to make meals out of the locusts. The federal government eased residency requirements for homesteaders and Congress supplied $30,000 in seeds to the area.

From 1874 to 1875, the U.S. Army handed out thousands of pieces of clothing and other items, including rations. In spring 1875, many of the hatched locust eggs from the 1874 infestation died due to the frost. The population of Rocky Mountain locusts continued to decline each year after 1874, leading to their extinction. [1] Many farmers left Nebraska due to the crop damage. [9] Riley wrote in the 1877 book The Locust Plague in the United States that the 1874 locust plague was worse than any of its predecessors. He also said that famine and death in the affected regions would have been possible if it were not for the aid received. Riley surmised that Kansas ultimately suffered the most out of the affected regions. [16] Locusts continued to cause more infestations, including Albert's swarm, until insecticides were created during World War II. [17] [4]

Cultural impact

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about the locust devastation of her family’s Minnesota farm in one of her memoir books for children, On the Banks of Plum Creek . [18]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Plains</span> Flat expanse in western North America

The Great Plains, sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located just to the east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. It is the western part of the Interior Plains, which also include the mixed grass prairie, the tallgrass prairie between the Great Lakes and Appalachian Plateau, and the Taiga Plains and Boreal Plains ecozones in Northern Canada. Great Plains or Western Plains is also used to describe the ecoregion of the Great Plains, or alternatively the western portion of the Great Plains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orthoptera</span> Order of insects including grasshoppers, crickets, weta and locusts

Orthoptera is an order of insects that comprises the grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets, including closely related insects, such as the bush crickets or katydids and weta. The order is subdivided into two suborders: Caelifera – grasshoppers, locusts, and close relatives; and Ensifera – crickets and close relatives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Locust</span> Grasshopper that has a swarming phase

Locusts are various species of short-horned grasshoppers in the family Acrididae that have a swarming phase. These insects are usually solitary, but under certain circumstances they become more abundant and change their behaviour and habits, becoming gregarious. No taxonomic distinction is made between locust and grasshopper species; the basis for the definition is whether a species forms swarms under intermittently suitable conditions; this has evolved independently in multiple lineages, comprising at least 18 genera in 5 different subfamilies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rocky Mountain locust</span> Extinct species of grasshopper

The Rocky Mountain locust is an extinct species of grasshopper that ranged through the western half of the United States and some western portions of Canada with large numbers seen until the end of the 19th century. Sightings often placed their swarms in numbers far larger than any other locust species, with one famous sighting in 1875 estimated at 198,000 square miles (510,000 km2) in size, weighing 27.5 million tons and consisting of some 12.5 trillion insects, the greatest concentration of animals ever speculatively guessed, according to Guinness World Records.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grasshopper</span> Common name for a group of insects

Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desert locust</span> Species of grasshopper

The desert locust is a species of locust, a periodically swarming, short-horned grasshopper in the family Acrididae. They are found primarily in the deserts and dry areas of northern and eastern Africa, Arabia, and southwest Asia. During population surge years, they may extend north into parts of Southern Europe, south into Eastern Africa, and east in northern India. The desert locust shows periodic changes in its body form and can change in response to environmental conditions, over several generations, from a solitary, shorter-winged, highly fecund, non-migratory form to a gregarious, long-winged, and migratory phase in which they may travel long distances into new areas. In some years, they may thus form locust plagues, invading new areas, where they may consume all vegetation including crops, and at other times, they may live unnoticed in small numbers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Migratory locust</span> Species of grasshopper

The migratory locust is the most widespread locust species, and the only species in the genus Locusta. It occurs throughout Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. It used to be common in Europe but has now become rare there. Because of the vast geographic area it occupies, which comprises many different ecological zones, numerous subspecies have been described. However, not all experts agree on the validity of some of these subspecies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mormon cricket</span> Species of cricket-like animal

The Mormon cricket is a large insect native to western North America in rangelands dominated by sagebrush and forbs. Anabrus is a genus in the shield-backed katydid subfamily in the Tettigoniidae family, commonly called katydids, bush crickets, and previously "long-horned grasshoppers". Its common name, "Mormon cricket", is a misnomer: true crickets are of the family Gryllidae.

The Nebraska Constitution is the basic governing document of the U.S. state of Nebraska. All acts of the Nebraska Legislature, the governor, and each governmental agency are subordinate to it. The constitution has been amended 228 times since it was first adopted in 1875, most notably to include the creation of a unicameral legislature.


Algona College was a private Methodist college located in Algona, Iowa. It operated from 1869 to 1875.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian plague locust</span> Species of grasshopper

The Australian plague locust is a native Australian insect in the family Acrididae, and a significant agricultural pest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert's swarm</span> 1875 infestation of Rocky Mountain locusts

Albert's swarm was an immense concentration of the Rocky Mountain locust that swarmed the Western United States in 1875. It was named after Albert Child, a physician interested in meteorology, who calculated the size of the swarm to 198,000 square miles (510,000 km2) by multiplying the swarm's estimated speed with the time it took for it to move through southern Nebraska.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">O. H. Irish</span> American diplomat

Orsamus Hylas Irish (1830–1883) was an official in the United States Department of the Treasury who served as Chief of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing from 1878 to 1883.

St. Ludger Catholic Church is a historic Roman Catholic parish church in Germantown, Henry County, Missouri.

In 2012, Madagascar had an upsurge in the size of its Malagasy migratory locust populations. In November of that year, the government issued a locust alert, saying that conditions were right for swarming of the pest insects. In February 2013, Cyclone Haruna struck the country, creating optimal conditions for locust breeding. By late March 2013, approximately 50% of the country was infested by swarms of locusts, with each swarm consisting of more than one billion insects. The authorities changed the situation to plague status. According to one eyewitness: "You don't see anything except locusts. You turn around, there are locusts everywhere".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inago no tsukudani</span>

Inago no tsukudani (いなごの佃煮) is a Japanese dish featuring rice grasshoppers that are boiled in soy sauce and sugar. Inago is the Japanese word for locust. The locusts are prepared in the "tsukudani" style of cooking. The dish is traditional in Japan's inland and mountain regions, including Nagano and Fukushima, where it once served as an important nutritional supplement.

In January 2016, Argentina faced the largest locust swarm for over 60 years. Diego Quiroga, Argentina's agriculture agency’s chief of vegetative protection, said that it was impossible to eradicate the swarm, so they focused on minimizing the damage caused by it by sending out fumigators equipped with backpack sprayers to exterminate small pockets of young locusts that are still unable to fly. This method of extermination, however, is unable to wipe out pocket of locusts hidden in Argentina's large, dry forests. The swarm covered an area the size of 1,900 square miles (5,000 km2) in Northern Argentina. The locusts were expected to grow ten inches (25 cm) and mature into flying swarms by 5 February.

Dissosteira longipennis, the high plains locust, is a species of band-winged grasshopper in the family Acrididae. It is found in North America. During the 1930s, it formed enormous swarms and caused significant damage to crops in the western United States, but it is now very rare and has not swarmed since. However rare, the species is still extant, unlike the Rocky Mountain locust, the only other species of locust found in North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2019–2022 locust infestation</span> Locust outbreak in East Africa, West Asia and South Asia

Between June 2019 and February 2022, a major outbreak of desert locusts began developing, threatening food supplies in East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent. The outbreak was the worst to hit Kenya in 70 years, and the worst in 25 years for Ethiopia, Somalia, and India.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Lyons, Chuck (February 5, 2012). "1874: The Year of the Locust". HistoryNet. Retrieved November 1, 2022.
  2. ↑ Yu, G.; Johnson, D; Ke, X.; Li, Y. (August 20, 2012). "A probe into the different fates of locust swarms in the plains of North America and East Asia" (PDF). Biogeosciences. doi: 10.5194/bgd-9-11179-2012 . Retrieved November 9, 2022.
  3. ↑ Dawson, George Mercer (1876). Notes on the locust invasion of 1874: in Manitoba and the North-West Territories. Montréal?: s.n.
  4. 1 2 Barnes, Simon (2022). A History of the World in 100 Animals. Simon and Schuster. p. 343. ISBN   978-1-64313-916-6 . Retrieved November 29, 2022.
  5. ↑ Behmer, ST; Joern, A (2012). "Insect herbivore outbreaks views through a physiological framework: insights from Orthoptera". Konza Prairie Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program. Retrieved November 1, 2022.
  6. ↑ American Bibliographical Center (1979). America, History and Life: Article abstracts and citations. Part A. Clio Press. p. 83. Retrieved November 1, 2022.
  7. 1 2 Bristow, David L. (July 15, 2022). "Clouds of Grasshoppers in 1874". Nebraskaland. Retrieved November 6, 2022.
  8. ↑ McTier, Rosemary Scanlon (2013). An Insect View of Its Plain: Insects, Nature and God in Thoreau, Dickinson and Muir. McFarland, Incorporated. ISBN   978-0-7864-6493-7 . Retrieved November 1, 2022.
  9. 1 2 Partsch, Tammy (2012). It Happened in Nebraska. Morris Book Publishing. p. 45. ISBN   978-0-7627-6971-1.
  10. ↑ Stratton, Joanna (2013). Pioneer Women. Touchstone. p. 102. ISBN   978-1-4767-5359-1 . Retrieved November 1, 2022.
  11. ↑ Miner, Craig (1986). West of Wichita: Settling the High Plains of Kansas, 1865–1890. University Press of Kansas. p. 52. ISBN   978-0-7006-0364-0 . Retrieved November 1, 2022.
  12. ↑ Sugar. R. Palmer. 1915. p. 11-PA54. Retrieved November 1, 2022.
  13. ↑ Froggatt, Walter Wilson (1900). Plague Locusts. p. 7. Retrieved November 1, 2022.
  14. ↑ "Grasshopper Plague of 1874". Kansapedia. June 2003. Retrieved November 1, 2022.
  15. ↑ Sorensen, W. Conner; Smith, Edward H.; Smith, Janet R. (2019). Charles Valentine Riley: Founder of Modern Entomology. University of Alabama Press. p. 108. ISBN   978-0-8173-2009-6 . Retrieved November 1, 2022.
  16. ↑ Riley, Charles Valentine (1877). The Locust Plague in the United States: Being More Particularly a Treatise on the Rocky Mountain Locust Or So-called Grasshopper, as it Occurs East of the Rocky Mountains, with Practical Recommendations for Its Destruction. Rand, McNally & Company. p. 39-40. Retrieved November 7, 2022.
  17. ↑ McComb, David G. (1989). Texas, a Modern History. University of Texas Press. p. 91. ISBN   978-0-292-74665-7 . Retrieved November 7, 2022.
  18. ↑ Fraser, Caroline (December 5, 2017). "Laura Ingalls Wilder and One of The Greatest Natural Disasters in American History". Literary Hub. Retrieved November 9, 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.