It was June of 1873 – a time of year, and a season that was likely similar to today. One could imagine that it was a pleasant day, warm, with plenty of soft sunshine – the kind of day where a warm breeze gently rolled atop the tall prairie grass and made it dance in harmony like waves on the ocean. On the frontier, June not only meant a time of pleasant weather, but a time of optimism. Gardens and farm fields that had been planted earlier were starting to sprout upward and climb toward the sky – their success having great impact on the year to come and they were monitored carefully.
By afternoon, it appeared as though a change in weather was coming. Those to recall the day would lament on what appeared to be a storm cloud on the horizon, some describing it akin to what looked like a snowstorm. Indeed, a storm was coming, yet it was not one of the meteorological brand; rather, the storm on that June day was a colossal swarm of locusts – one so large and so thick it was seen with biblical proportions. It was the start of the great grasshopper plague of 1873.
They were called Rocky Mountain Locusts, a species of grasshoppers now extinct. They were green, large, and devoured every piece of vegetation they could find. Those who lived through the incident recalled that after a swarm swept through, they left a patch of land that resembled late autumn rather than summer. All across central and southwestern Minnesota, the swarms destroyed vegetation – trees became bare and fields yielded no crops.
There seemed to be no stopping them. Of the first swarm in 1873, they left larva everywhere they went that hatched the following spring, creating more swarms across the prairie. It seemed as though no method, not even prayer, would rid the region of the locusts. One man, John E. Beach, whose grandfather owned land near Buffalo Creek, recalled, “Grandfather’s land lay with Lake Addie to the east and Buffalo Creek to the northwest. These were partial barriers to the locally hatched hoppers. Enlisting half of the neighbors who were fully exposed on the open prairie, they plowed barriers across the southwest flank and by using tar, burned old hay and straw spread in long windrows, adding eternal vigilance. They saved enough crops to make flour for the families involved…using every resource and ingenuity, the folks were able to stick it out, but scars could never be erased from memory”.
Those who were unable to devise methods to relieve themselves from the locusts chose other means to rid themselves of the grasshoppers. McLeod County resident, Carlos Avery remarked “When the grasshoppers came, the exodus was almost as marked as the Indian Outbreak of 1862. Our family was one to leave the farm to the hoppers and move east until the scourge was over”.
It wasn’t until 1877 that the grasshoppers finally left. That spring, a late snowstorm passed through much of the state and killed most of the freshly hatched larva. It was followed by good rains (which would put a damper on grasshopper hatching) and pleasant weather that allowed the crops to grow fast. Later that summer a drought hit, and a new swarm of grasshoppers emerged as years before. This time, however, the swarms did something unexplained – they took wing and left the area. By the end of summer, 1877, few of the locusts could be seen. It marked the end of the great Minnesota grasshopper plague.