[1] The locust plague also reached the Northwest Territories and Manitoba; one 1877 observer theorized that a range of coniferous timber prevented them from overtaking some parts of Saskatchewan.

[2][3] The United States Entomological Commission wrote in 1880 that the infestation "covered a swath equal to the combined areas of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

The invasion coincided with a record drought in the Midwest and Great Plains, which induced the grasshoppers (estimated at 120 billion to 12.5 trillion) to not only thrive but also to swarm when local vegetation was decimated.

The arriving locusts would pile up to over a foot high and ate crops, trees, leaves, grass, wool off sheep, harnesses on horses, paint from wagons, and pitchfork handles.

[1] Other unsuccessful efforts to stop the plague included covering fields with sheets and smoking grasshoppers away from crops and into water and oil-filled ditches to drown them.

[11][12] Missouri's state entomologist Charles Valentine Riley claimed the locusts were not poisonous, were as nutritious as oysters, and could be used to make a variety of dishes, or fried with honey.

[10] Local officials were worried that farmers would give up and move away and that western settlement would suffer, so initially the governors of Kansas and Nebraska established private relief agencies to distribute food and supplies rather than seek state or federal assistance.

The Nebraska Relief and Aid Association, organized in September 1874, collected "money, provisions, clothing, fuel, seeds and other necessary supplies" from private sources.

[6] The federal government's response was initially limited to an executive order in November 1874 by President Ulysses S. Grant authorizing the distribution of surplus and condemned army clothing in Kansas and Nebraska.

An Army major sent to inspect southwestern Nebraska wrote General Edward O. C. Ord, commander of the Department of the Platte, to say that "The destitution existing here is much greater than I expected.

In December 1874, Kansas Agricultural Secretary Alfred Gray reported to Governor Osborn "that as much as 70 percent of the population was impoverished in the worst hit counties.

"[10] In 1875, the federal government eased residency requirements for homesteaders so that farmers could leave their farms to seek aid, and Congress supplied $30,000 in seeds to the area.

[10] Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about the locust devastation of her family’s Minnesota farm in one of her memoir books for children, On the Banks of Plum Creek.