Country Roads

It was almost 150 years ago that our earliest pioneers faced one of the worst years on their prairie farms when swarms of grasshoppers invaded the land devouring everything in sight. It was at the end of July 1874. For the previous two years there had been good wheat crops and 1874 was no exception. The wheat had just been harvested and the corn fields were promising a good crop. A Jewell County settler, Joel Green, who had a farm west of Burr Oak, on July 21 began to notice swarms of grasshoppers arriving in his fields. Two days later, he recorded “grasshoppers alighted today in myraids, lite...