COLD SPRING, Minn. — For five summers, a plague of grasshoppers devastated the Midwest, until a wooden chapel rose on a hill in Cold Spring, Minnesota.

Assumption Chapel, also known as “Grasshopper Chapel,” was built in August 1877, five years after swarms of grasshoppers began feasting on farmlands in the Midwest. However, unlike the granite building on the hill today, the original chapel was a small, wooden, shack-like structure, said Marv Salzer, the chapel caretaker.

The plague started in 1873 when an infestation of Rocky Mountain locusts — a now extinct species of grasshopper — invaded Minnesota and surrounding states. For five years, the Rocky Mountain locusts feasted on crops, fruit, wood and clothes, according to an article from the Minnesota Historical Society, “Grasshopper Pla

See Full Page