Grasshopper Cross

The insect behind Father Boucher's pilgrimage was the Rocky Mountain locust, Melanoplus spretus, and its swarms of 1873 to 1877 did some $200 million in crop damage across the plains. One swarm reported in 1875 was estimated at 198,000 square miles and about 12.5 trillion insects. Within three decades the species was gone; the last specimens were collected in Manitoba in 1902 and Colorado in 1904. Entomologist Jeffrey Lockwood traced the collapse to settlers plowing, irrigating and grazing the Rocky Mountain river valleys where it laid its eggs.

What the plaque says

Grasshopper Cross The Huge wooden cross in the cemetery, replaced the rude one erected on that day in May, 1876, when Father Pierre Boucher led his pilgrimage of Catholic & Protestant marchers back to Jefferson, after an eleven mile trek seeking Divine Intervention in the grasshopper plague. It was the third cross erected that miraculous day. The grasshoppers left. Erected 1966 by Regina Bernard in memory of her father, Pierre U. Bernard and State Historical Society Replica of the original Grasshopper Cross May 1876 Donor Alex Chicoine, Jr. 1987

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ponca State Park — 7.6 mi
  Oak ravines and bluffs at the downstream end of the Missouri's last unchannelized reach in Nebraska, with a three-state overlook and the river's resource and education center.
• National Music Museum — 22 mi
  One of the great collections of musical instruments in the world, on a college campus in a prairie town, built around a band teacher's thousands of horns, fiddles and curiosities.
• Spirit Mound Historic Prairie — 27 mi
  A lone hill north of Vermillion that Lewis and Clark walked to on a scorching day in 1804, now one of the few places left where you can stand exactly where they stood.

More markers nearby

• St. Peter's Church Jefferson — steps away
• Postmasters Jefferson — steps away
• First Flour Mill in Dakota — steps away
• Twelve Mile House — 0.4 mi