Albert's Swarm Sighting
- When
- 1875
- Where
- Western United States
A famous 1875 sighting estimated a Rocky Mountain locust swarm at 198,000 square miles, 27.5 million tons, and some 12.5 trillion insects.
The famous 1875 sighting placed the swarm at 198,000 square miles (510,000 km2) in size—greater than the area of California—weighing 27.5 million tons and consisting of some 12.5 trillion insects, which Guinness World Records calls the greatest concentration of animals ever recorded. This sighting fell within the last major swarms of Rocky Mountain locusts, which occurred between 1873 and 1877 and caused $200 million in crop damage in Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and other states. Farmers' control efforts during this period proved ultimately ineffective.
Sources
- Rocky Mountain locust Wikipedia, revision of 2026-06-20
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.