Mormon crickets plagued the area now known as Utah in springtime 1848 while the Latter-day Saints were desperately trying to get food.
Later, this was called “the cricket war.”
The Deseret News wrote in 1855, “As for the Saints we are perfectly aware that through faith and obedience they can prevail in the grasshopper war, at least as well as they did in the cricket war of 1848.” But there is a tale of a miracle that occurred that kept the Mormon crickets at bay and led the Saints to prosperity.
It’s known as the Miracle of the Gulls.
Utahns, especially those who reside around Utah Lake or the Great Salt Lake, might notice seagulls, far away from any sea. According to Wild About Utah, many seagulls reside in Utah and they became the state bird due to their important role: “Known in Utah for having saved the pioneers from the Mormon cricket invasion of 1848 and subsequent years, gulls hold a hallowed place in local history.”
What is the Miracle of the Gulls?
William Hartley recounted the story of the Miracle of the Gulls in Utah History Quarterly. The pioneers, who began arriving in Salt Lake Valley on July 22, 1847, had struggled with the new terrain, and a couple of frosts destroyed their crops.
According to LDS Living, 1848 was the Saints’ first chance at a full harvest since their arrival. After planting a few thousand acres of crops to later harvest, they experienced a “deadly frost” followed by crickets in May 1848.
The frost and crickets had disastrous effects. Eliza R. Snow was remembered as saying, “This morning’s frost in unison with the ravages of the crickets for a few days past produces many sighs, and occasionally some long faces.” Apparently, there were “millions of crickets,” at least, that’s what Mrs. Lorenzo Dow Young wrote in her husband’s diary.
Hartley wrote, “The harrassed farmers ‘prayed and fought and fought and prayed’ for almost two weeks against the dumpy crickets — which some Mormons jokingly described as a cross between the spider and the buffalo.” For months, pioneers struggled to survive as their crops were decimated until seagulls saved them.
On June 9, 1848, some wrote to Brigham Young about seagulls sweeping crickets away, “The sea gulls have come in large flocks from the lake and sweep the crickets as they go; it seems the hand of the Lord is in our favor.”
Per Utah online public library, Orson F. Whitney wrote, “When it seemed that nothing could stay the devastation, great flocks of gulls appeared, filling the air with their white wings and plaintive cries, and settled down upon the half-ruined fields. fields. All day long they gorged themselves, and when full, disgorged and feasted again, the white gulls upon the black crickets, list hosts of heaven and hell contending, until the pests were vanquished and the people were saved.”
John Smith wrote that the gulls came every day for three weeks, per LDS Living. This event became known as the Miracle of the Gulls. During General Conference in September 1853, Orson Hyde referenced this miracle and said, “the gulls had been agents prepared by the hands of providence.”
About the veracity of this miracle, historian Casey Griffiths said to LDS Living, “The gulls did appear, on a smaller scale than we sometimes envision, and that was a miracle to many of the early pioneers. I am not ready to tear down the Seagull Monument on Temple Square because the gulls are only a symbol of the greater miracle that the pioneers were able to survive in the valley at all, given the conditions they lived in.”
In other words, the story is true, but the seagulls didn’t intervene as much as we may imagine them to have done.
But it still was a miracle to those pioneers who experienced it.
What is the state bird of Utah?
It was this miracle that likely made Utah’s state bird the seagull, according to Utah’s online public library. There is a Seagull Monument in Temple Square to honor the bird, which was built by Mahonri MacKintosh Young.