The American Locust Plague of 1874 (Episode 52)

In the spring of 1874, a plague of locusts descended on the American Midwest in a swarm so vast it blocked the sky for miles before it settled down and beginning to eat...everything. Farmers and homesteaders fought back with blankets, coal tar, and fire, with exactly zero success. By the first frost that autumn, an estimated 120 billion Rocky Mountain Locusts had destroyed hundreds of thousands of square miles of farmland.  

On this episode, we're talking grasshoppers vs. locusts, high-protein snacks, an anti-locust fungus, disaster relief, and some pretty incredible hopping muscles.

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Sources for this episode include:

"Grasshopper Plague of 1874", by staff writer, Kansas Historical Society, 2016

"1874: The Year of the Locust", by C. Lyons for Historynet, 2012

"The Death of the Super Hopper", by J. Lockwood for High Country News, 2003

"Report of the United States Entomological Commission", F. V. Hayden et all, 1878