A Brief History of Mormon Cricket Wars
Brigham Young and the vanguard company of Latter-day Saint pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, but President Young didn’t stay long.
On Aug. 31, he set out east again to return to Winter Quarters and collect his family and another company of pioneers.
The Cricket War of 1848 began while he was gone.
Mormon crickets are misnamed. The “Mormon” part is fine: Again, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ guide for the use of its name states that “‘Mormon’ is correctly used in proper names such as the Book of Mormon or when used as an adjective in such historical expressions as ‘Mormon Trail.’”
It’s the term “cricket” that is incorrect. Mormon crickets aren’t crickets at all. They actually are shield-backed katydids.
Those shielded backs are the reason why the latest infestations this summer have produced — warning, these are a bit gross — videos like this one, where car tires rolling over the crickets in Nevada streets make a crunching noise. Or this one, where a woman in a car running over crickets says she can hear the icky sound.
At least one person used the hashtag “#battlethecrickets” on social media, where numerous people have used the words “absolutely disgusting” to describe the large insects.
In 1855, a Deseret News writer coined the term “Cricket War of 1848.”
This summer and last, another Deseret News writer, my colleague Hanna Seariac, has written about the latest Mormon cricket wars — typically, the worst outbreaks happen in 20-year cycles. Last year, concerns were bad enough in the northwest for Oregon to announce a Mormon Cricket Suppression Program, according to Hanna. This year, she looked back on the famous 1848 event when seagulls came to eat the crickets and salvage Latter-day Saint crops.
Before the seagulls arrived, some pioneers were trying to reach President Young and encourage him not to bring more pioneers west in 1848. They worried that starvation would result because the crickets were consuming acres of grain and other crops.
But President Young left Winter Quarters with another company on June 1 that year, and the seagulls helped save the day.
Nevada, obviously, was hit hardest this year, but there have been outbreaks in Idaho, Wyoming and elsewhere.
Utah has been relatively safe, though it’s been 20 years since a terrible outbreak in the state, because of the unusually wet winter.
I read a great piece about the Cricket War of 1848. There are some great diary entries from pioneers.
Mrs. Lorenzo Dow Young wrote on May 27 that:
“We have grappled with the frost. . . but today to our utter astonishment, the crickets came by millions, sweeping everything before them. They first attacked a patch of beans for us and in twenty minutes there was not a vestige of them to be seen. They next swept over peas, then came into our garden; took everything clean. We went out with brush and undertook to drive them, but they were too strong for us.”
Here’s a brief but interesting look inside one Wyoming researcher’s work on Mormon crickets.