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Information on Agriculture and Ranching in the Stephen H. Hart Library

Bibliography -Rocky Mountain Locust 

Colorado History NOW, August 2002. Modupe Labode, Chief Historian, Colorado Historical Society

Although many books on western history allude to the ravages of the Rocky Mountain Locust, they do not contain much detailed information concerning response of the people to this situation.

For a classic description of a grasshopper invasion, see Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Banks of Plum Creek. O.E. Rölvaag includes an account of the plague in his novel Giants of the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie.

Rita Edaakie, in her book on Zuni cuisine, Idonapshe: Let’s Eat (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), includes a recipe for chummali – locusts with cornmeal mush.

Carol Kaesuk Yoon’s article in the New York Times first alerted me to this topic.

Sources:
Atkins, Annette. Harvest of Grief: Grasshopper Plagues and Public Assistance in Minnesota, 1873-1878. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1984.

Packard, A.S. Report on the Rocky Mountain Locust and Other Insects. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1877.

Lockwood, Jeffrey A. "Voices from the Past: What can we learn from the Rocky Mountain Locust?" American Entomologist, 47, No. 4(Winter 2001): 208-215.

Lockwood, Jeffrey A. and Larry D. DeBrey, "A Solution for the Sudden and Unexplained Extinction of the Rocky Mountain Grasshopper (Orthoptera: Acrididae)."Environmental Entomology, 19, No. 5, (October 1990): 1196-1205.

"Millions and Millions," in Mountain and Plain History Notes. Denver: State Historical Society of Colorado, August 1976.

Steinel, Alvin T. History of Agriculture in Colorado, 1858-1926. State Board of Agriculture, Denver? 1926.

Stolzenburg, William. "Ghost Birds of the Grasslands." Nature Conservancy, 52, No.2, (Summer 2002): 20-27.

U.S. Department of Agriculture. Third Report of the United States Entomological Commission. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1883.

U.S. Department of the Interior, First Annual Report of the United States Entomological Commission for the Year 1877, relating to the Rocky Mountain Locust. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1878.

------. Second Report of the United States Entomological Commission for the years 1878- 1879 relating to the Rocky Mountain Locust and the Western Cricket. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880.

Yoon, Carol Kaesuk. "Looking Back at the Days of the Locust." New York Times, April 23, 2002: D1, D4.

Bibliography prepared by Modupe Labode, Chief Historian of the Colorado Historical Society. 

Some of the materials in this bibliography may not be available in the Stephen H. Hart Library.

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