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When The Skies Turned To Black
The Locust Plaque of 1875
A study of the intersection of
history and genealogy
Ever wonder why your ancestors suddenly left an area and moved to a distant
region? Or, why did they return to the same area that they originally came from?
If you had family who lived in the States of Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas or the western
portions of Iowa, Missouri, or Minnesota in the mid 1870’s, chances are they
were witnesses of the devastating plagues of locusts that swept over the region.
Lush gardens and fields of a wide range of crops were reduced to a barren,
desert like appearance within a matter of hours. Crops that were needed to
sustain a family and their farm animals were destroyed leaving no means of
support during the coming winter.
As early as records are available, the central region of the United States has
had occasional times when locusts would increase in number and quickly devour
crops over a large region. None of the previous invasions were nearly as
devastating as what would become known as The Year of The Locust: 1875. Nothing
like it in the United States had been recorded before and nothing like it has been seen since.
What could cause such devastation and panic? The answer is a relatively small
flying grasshopper, roughly 1.25 to 1.4 inches long, known as the Rocky Mountain
Locust. Individually, they were rather unimpressive and caused little problem.
When conditions were ideal, they could multiply into the billions, travel over
long distances, and consume virtually anything and everything that was remotely
edible. Their native homelands were the dry Rocky Mountain upland region of
primarily Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. After hatching out in the spring of the
year, the locusts would travel eastward in search of food. In years where the
number of those hatched was unusually large, the food supply was stripped rather
quickly driving them ever eastward in search of new food supplies. Kansas and
Nebraska were usually among their first targets and were frequently the most
devastated but the swarms spread over a large area stretching north from the
interior of Canada and extending all the way to the south border of Texas. The
eastern regions of Nebraska and Kansas along with the western regions of
Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri were the areas most devastated.
The Year of the Locust actually began with the first arrivals of the swarms in
the mid summer of 1874. They reached the northwestern corner of Missouri in late
July to early August. Within the coming weeks, the locusts continued their trek
in a southeast direction until they reached the limits of their travel. Most of
the heavy damage in 1874 was limited to Kansas and Nebraska. Damage was rather
light in Missouri 1874 but the appearance of such huge numbers of the insects
caused a great deal of panic of what was feared to be coming in the spring of
1875. The fears were realized by late April of 1875 when the spring hatch out
began. The numbers have since been estimated to be in the trillions, an
unimaginable number that has no match in all of recorded history. Consider this
quote from "Voices from the Past: What We Can Learn from the Rocky Mountain
Locust" by Jeffrey A. Lockwood:
“According to the first-hand account of A. L. Child transcribed by Riley et
al. (1880), a swarm of Rocky Mountain locusts passed over Plattsmouth, Nebraska,
in 1875. By timing the rate of movement as the insects streamed overhead for 5
days and by telegraphing to surrounding towns, he was able to estimate that the
swarm was 1,800 miles long and at least 110 miles wide. Based on his
information, this swarm 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.”
Nearly every county
history from the late 1800’s in the affected areas records an account of the
devastation within their own borders. The following are quotes from several of
these county histories:
“It was the year 1875 that will long be remembered by the people of at least
four states, as the grasshopper year. The scourge struck Western Missouri April,
1875, and commenced devastating some of the fairest portions of our noble
commonwealth. They gave Henry [County] an earnest and overwhelming visitation,
and demonstrated with an amazing rapidity that their appetite was voracious, and
that everything green belonged to them for their sustenance. They came in
swarms, they came by the millions, they came in legions, they came by the mile,
and they darkened the heavens in their flight, or blackened the earth's surface,
where in myriads they sought their daily meal. Henry County was visited from
about the first week of May, and remained until the 1st of June, 1875, and
during that time, every spear of wheat, oats, flax and corn were eaten close to
the ground. Potatoes and all vegetables received the same treatment, and on the
line of their march, ruin stared the farmer in the face, and starvation knocked
loudly at his door.”
The History of Henry and St. Clair County, Missouri. 1883, National
Historical Company, St. Joseph, Missouri
“The invasion of
Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and Western Missouri, by the grasshoppers; or more
properly speaking, the Rocky Mountain Locusts, in 1874, occurred in the month of
August; and was fraught with great disaster to the agricultural interests of
those States and to the trade of Kansas City. The locusts came in immense clouds
and literally covered the territory mentioned. Their first appearance was
generally at a great altitude, flying from the northwest to the southeast, and
their appearance was that of a snow storm. Sometimes they were so numerous as to
darken the sunlight. They settled gradually to the ground, when their voracity
soon made itself apparent; whole fields of green corn being destroyed in a
single day. Nothing escaped them; there appeared to be nothing they would not
eat; at least there was nothing that they did not eat; and in their progress
they left the country nearly as bare of vegetation as if it had been scorched by
fire. By the time they reached the Missouri River section, vegetation, at least
the crops, was too far advanced for them to do material harm, but on the
frontiers, where they appeared earlier, and where the new settlers' dependence
was a crop of sod corn, necessarily late and immature, their destruction was
great and caused much suffering during the following winter. They matured
sufficiently to begin to deposit their eggs when about fifty miles west of
Kansas City, and continued until they had advanced to about fifty miles east of
it. Hence, in the spring of the year 1875, a new crop was hatched to infest the
country, and they proved no less voracious than their progenitors of the year
before. A district about a hundred miles wide extending southward from Kansas
City a hundred miles and northward to the British possessions, was kept as bare
of vegetation as midwinter until June of 1875, when the young brood suddenly
took wing and disappeared as mysteriously as their progenitors had appeared,
going in a northwesterly direction. The effect of all this was to cost the
larger part of the country united by them the bulk of a year's crop, part of it
in the fall of 1874, and part in the spring of 1875. Such disaster could not but
affect detrimentally the business of Kansas City. Early in the winter of 1874-5
it was ascertained that there was great suffering among the people of western
Kansas from this cause, and organized efforts for relief began to be made. The
east was appealed to and responded liberally.”
The History of Jackson County, Missouri. 1881, Union Historical Company,
Birdsall, Williams & Co., Kansas City
* * *
"1875- 'Serious and distressing,' says Mr. Riley, 'as were the ravages of this
insect in 1874, when the winged swarms overswept several of the western states,
and poured into our western counties in the fall, the injury and suffering that
ensued were as naught in Missouri, compared to what resulted from the unfledged
myriads that hatched out in the spring of 1875.' 'The greatest damage extended
over a strip twenty-five miles each side of the Missouri river, from Omaha to
Kansas City, and then extending south to the southwestern limit of Missouri-and
Bates, Buchanan, Barton, Clay, Cass, Clinton, Henry, Jackson, Johnson,
Lafayette, Platte, St. Clair, and Vernon, suffered most. Early in May, the
reports from the locust districts of the state were very conflicting; the
insects were confined to within short radii of their hatching-grounds. The
season was propitious, and where the insects did not occur, everything promised
well. As the month drew more and more to a close, the insects extended the area
of destruction, and the alarm became general. By the end of the month, the
non-timbered portions of the middle western counties, were as bare as in winter.
Here and there patches of Amarantus blitem, and a few jagged stalks of milk-weed
(Asclepas) served to relieve the monotony. An occasional out-field, or low piece
of prairie, would also remain green; but with these exceptions one might travel
for days by buggy and find everything eaten off, even to underbrush in the
woods. The suffering was great and the people well nigh disheartened. Cattle and
stock of all kinds, except hogs and poultry, were driven away to the more
favored counties, and relief committees were organized. Many families left the
state under the influence of the temporary panic and the unnecessary forebodings
and exaggerated statements of the pessimists. Chronic loafers and idlers even
made some trouble and threatened to seize the goods and property of the
well-to-do. Relief work was, however, carried on energetically, and with few
exceptions, no violence occurred.”
“In his eighth annual report Mr. Riley (then state entomologist of Missouri)
thus estimates the loss in the various counties of Missouri in 1875: Atchison,
$700,000; Andrew, $500,000; Bates, $200,000; Barton, $5,000; Benton, $5,000;
Buchanan, $2,000,000; Caldwell, $10,000; Cass, $2,000,000; Clay, $800,000;
Clinton, $600,000; De Kalb, $200,000; Gentry, $400,000; Harrison, $10,000;
Henry, $800,000; Holt, $300,000; Jackson, $2,500,000; Jasper, $5,000; Johnson,
$1,000,000; Lafayette, $2,000,000; Newton, $5,000; Pettis, $50,000; Platte,
$800,000; Ray, $75,000; Saint Clair, $850,000; Vernon, $75,000; Worth, $10,000.
Amounting in the aggregate to something over $15,000,000.”
“The vastness of the depredations of the insect are better appreciated when it
is stated that the locust area comprised nearly two million square miles, and
that Missouri suffered on an average with the other states within that section.
It is estimated that the aggregate loss in the destruction of crops alone would
reach $100,000,000, and that the indirect stoppage in business, and the crushing
of new enterprises made fully as much more, so that direct and indirect loss was
not less than $200,000,000. Mr. F. V. Hayden, U. S. geologist, in this
connection says: "In addition to all this, we must include as a part of the
effect of locust injuries, the checking of immigration, and the depreciation in
the value of lands. So depressing, in fact, was this result in some regions as
to paralyze trade, put a stop to all new enterprises, and dishearten the
communities where the suffering was greatest."
The History of Johnson County, Missouri. 1881, Kansas City Historical
Company, Kansas City, MO
“These were the years of the great devastation in Nebraska, Kansas, and western
Missouri by the Rocky Mountain locust (Caloptemus Spretus). The locusts came in
thick flying clouds, mostly from a west or northwesterly direction, in the fall
of 1874; they destroyed what they could find then that was green and juicy
enough for them, and finally laid their eggs. Lafayette county did not suffer
greatly this year, as compared with other counties further west and north. But
when the little imps hatched out in the spring and commenced marching eastward,
eating a clean swath as they went, then this county knew what it was to be "grasshoppered."
A correspondent of the Chicago Times wrote from Lexington, May 18, 1875: "The
grasshoppers are on the move east, eating everything green in their road. One
farmer south of this city had fifteen acres of corn eaten by them yesterday in
three hours. They mowed it down close to the ground just as if a mowing machine
had cut it. All the tobacco plants in the upper part of the county have been
eaten by them.’”
The History of Lafayette County, Missouri. 1881, Missouri Historical Company,
St. Louis, MO.
* * *
"Their flight, may be likened to an immense snow-storm, extending from the
ground to a height at which our visual organs perceive them only as minute,
darting scintillations, leaving the imagination to picture them indefinite
distances beyond. 'When on the highest peaks of the Snowy Range, fourteen or
fifteen thousand feet above the sea, I have seen them filling the air as much
higher as they could be distinguished with a good field-glass. It is a vast
cloud of animated specks, glittering against the sun. 0n the horizon they often
appear as a dust tornado, riding upon the wind like an ominous hail-storm,
eddying and whirling about like the wild, dead leaves in an autumn storm, and
finally sweeping up to and past you, with a power that is irresistible. They
move mainly with the wind, and when there is no wind they whirl about in the air
like swarming bees. If a passing swarm suddenly meets with a change in the
atmosphere, 'such as the approach of a thunderstorm or gale of wind, they came
down precipitately, seeming to fold their wings, and fall by the force of
gravity, thousands being killed by the fall if it is upon stone or other hard
surface.'"
"An idea of the vast numbers that will sometimes descend to the ground may be
formed by the following occurrence, related to us by an intelligent and reliable
eye-witness, Mr. H. McAllister, of Colorado Springs, Colo.: In 1875, early in
August, a swarm suddenly come down at that place. The insects came with the
wind, and alighted in a rain. The ground was literally covered two and three
inches deep, and glittered "as a new dollar" with the active multitude. In
rising, the next day, by a common impulse, their wings would get entangled, and
they would drop to the ground again in a matted mass. "In alighting, they circle
in myriads about you, beating against everything animate or inanimate, driving
into open doors and windows, heaping about your feet and around your buildings,
their jaws constantly at work biting and testing all things in seeking what they
can devour. In the midst of the incessant buzz and noise which such a fight
produces, in face of the unavoidable destruction everywhere going on, one is
bewildered and awed at the collective power of the ravaging host, which calls to
mind so forcibly the plagues of Egypt."
"The noise their myriad jaws make when engaged in their work of destruction can
be realized by any one who has 'fought' a prairie fire or heard the flames
passing along before a brisk wind-the low crackling and rasping; the general
effect of the two sounds is very much the same."
"Persons in the East have often smiled incredulously at our statements that the
locusts often impeded the trains on the western railroads. Yet such was by no
means an infrequent occurrence in 1874 and 1875-the insects pawing over the
track or basking thereon so numerously that the oil from their crushed bodies
reduced the traction so as to actually stop the train, especially on an
up-grade."
Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture For The Year 1877. Washington, DC
1878.
* * *
"The severely
stricken region, covering an area variously estimated at from 200 to 275 miles
from east to west, and from 250 to 350 miles from north to south, and embracing
portions of Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri, presented a variety of experience,
some portions being comparatively exempt from injury, while others wore an
aspect of devastation that changed the verdure of spring into the barrenness of
winter."
"The tract in which the injury done by the destructive enemy was worst, was
confined to the two western tiers of counties in Missouri, and the four tiers of
counties in Kansas, bounded by the Missouri river on the east. The greatest
damage extended over a strip 25 miles each side of the Missouri river, from
Omaha to Kansas City, and then extending south to the southwestern limit of
Missouri. About three-quarters of a million of people were to a greater or less
extent made sufferers. The experience of different localities was not equal or
uniform. Contiguous farms sometimes presented the contrast of abundance and
utter want, according to the caprices of the invaders, or according as they
hatched in localities favorable to the laying of the eggs. This fact gave rise
to contradictory reports, each particular locality generalizing from its own
experience. The fact is, however, that over the region described there was a
very general devastation, involving the destruction of three-fourth of all field
and garden crops. While the injury was greatest in the area defined above, the
insects hatched in more or less injurious numbers from Texas to British
America-the prevalence of the insects in Manitoba being such that in many parts
little or no cultivation was attempted."
The Locust Plague in the United States by Charles V. Riley. 1877, Rand,
McNally & Co., Chicago.
* * *
"In 1875, near Lane, Kansas, they crossed the Potawotomie Creek, which is about
four rods wide, by millions; while the Big and Little Blues, tributaries of the
Missouri, near Independence, the one about 100 feet wide at its mouth, and the
other not so wide, were crossed at numerous places by the moving armies, which
would march down to the water's edge and commence jumping in, one upon another,
till they would pontoon the stream, so as to effect a crossing. Two of these
mighty armies also met, one moving east and the other west, on the river-bluff,
in the same locality, and each turning their course north and down the bluff,
and coming to a perpendicular ledge of rock 25 or 30 feet high, passed over in a
sheet apparently 6 or 7 inches thick, and causing a roaring noise similar to a
cataract of water."
Riley's Eighth Report, p. 118. recorded in First Annual Report Of The United
States Entomological Commission For The Year 1877 Relating To The Rocky Mountain
Locust
Other historical accounts have recorded that after the crops were devoured, the
locusts turned to the trees, consuming the leaves and stripping the bark from
the trees. There are some accounts that fence posts, axe handles, cloth, leather
stirrups, bridles, and gloves were also chewed and consumed in their never
ending search for food.
By late June, the locusts had done their worst and vanished as quickly as they
had arrived. Most reports state that the swarms took flight in a northwest
direction, apparently returning in the direction from which they had originally
come. Despite the lateness of the date, the people went to work in hurriedly
replanting their gardens and crops with hopes and prayers that the crops would
have enough time to mature before winter arrived. Corn was planted as late as
July 4th, which is quite late since most corn in Missouri is planted in May to
very early June. A typical Missouri summer is hot and dry so early planting is
essential to give a reasonable chance of a successful crop. The year of 1875 was
not a typical year. The rains were plentiful and the season was longer than
usual. The result was record crops that far exceeded the yield of a typical
year. Some areas in Missouri actually were able to grow a surplus of crops which
were shipped to the hardest hit areas of Kansas and Nebraska. It was a joyous
and surprise ending to what was expected to be a time of extended desperation
with a bleak winter ahead.
While the surprisingly successful season brought much relief, there continued to
be a general fear that the next spring would see a return of the hordes of
locusts. The locusts did return to some degree in the following two years. A
great deal of study was made to attempt to control any future invasions.
Numerous inventions were patented that were supposed to be of value in combating
the pests. Most of the states made efforts to control the locusts by a wide
range of means. Bounties were paid for the collection of quantities of the
locusts, usually of $1 per bushel. Nicollet County, Minnesota paid $25,053 for
25,053 bushels of locusts while some counties paid out even higher amounts. It
will never be known if these attempts really made much difference
While they continued to be destructive, they were always much less so than in
1875. Never again were they as great of a threat as they had been during that
memorable year. Then, surprising, they simply disappeared, never to be seen
again. The last recorded sighting of the Rocky Mountain Locust was in 1902.
Why did they disappear? A number of theories have been proposed but none seem to
provide a completely satisfactory answer. One suggestion is that the widespread
settlement of the prairie and the resulting plowing that was done may have
disrupted the locusts reproductive success since they laid their eggs in the
soil. A number of rainy years may have played a role since their greatest
reproductive success was when they laid their eggs in dry soil.
While many by their own choice did stay through all of the difficulties, others
who stayed simply had no choice but to stay, they were too destitute to move on.
Others, particularly in Kansas and Nebraska thought it best to cut their losses
moved away, mostly east outside of the area affected by the repeated plagues.
The plagues, for a time at least, slowed and some areas actually reversed the
migration into the most affected prairie region. Do you have ancestors who
without explanation moved from the counties in this region in the mid to late
1870’s? There is an excellent chance that the now extinct Rocky Mountain Locust
played a significant role in their decision.
Find more related articles concerning
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Execution by Burning at the Stake
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Madrid Earthquake of 1811-12
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