Grasshopper Plague of 1874

A Kansas Portrait

Inexpensive lands and the hope of a better life brought many settlers to Kansas in the years following the Civil War. Life on the frontier, however, had drawbacks. Indian attacks, droughts, depressions and grasshoppers discouraged settlement on the Kansas frontier. Grasshoppers posed a threat to farmers many times but no year was worse than 1874 when millions of the hoppers, or Rocky Mountain locusts, descended on the prairies from the Dakotas to Texas.

In late July they came without warning in swarms so large they blocked out the sun and sounded like a rainstorm. When a swarm landed, the omnivorous pests brought near total destruction. Crops were eaten out of the ground, as well as the wool from live sheep and clothing off people's backs. Paper, tree bark and even wooden tool handles were devoured.

Hoppers were reported to have been several inches deep on the ground and locomotives could not get traction because the insects made the rail too slippery. Settlers did their best to stop the hoppers by raking them into piles, like leaves, and burning them but these efforts were in vain because of the sheer numbers of the pests. The hoppers usually stayed from two days to a week and then left as they had come, on the wind. The areas hit the worst were the least prepared for such a disaster, where most of the settlers were new arrivals, who had not had time to establish themselves in their new homes.

Governor Thomas Osborn called a special session of the legislature to issue bonds to relieve the destitution left by the grasshoppers. The rest of the nation responded to pleads for aid by sending money and supplies, which were often hauled free of charge by the railroads.

Kansans refused to be defeated. Inventive citizens built hopper dozers or grasshopper harvesters to combat future visitations. Humor in the form of tall tales described hoppers approaching a house: "They first attacked the green shades on the windows, and then a green painted dust pan. A green Irish servant girl, asleep in one of the rooms, was the next victim and not a vestige of her was left."