The Miracle of the Gulls: Sea Birds Devour Cricket Plague and Save the Pioneer Harvest (June 1848)

In the spring of 1848, the pioneers of the Salt Lake Valley were already at the edge of starvation. They had survived a brutal winter — physician Priddy Meeks described his family going 'several months without a satisfying meal.' He dug wild thistles from miles away and ate hawk, crow, dead cattle found in mire holes, and wolf meat. Then came the crickets.

'Finly, the crickets came so thick it made the earth black in places,' Meeks wrote, 'and it did look like they would take what little we had growing, which looked nice and flourishing. . . . Now everything did look gloomy. Our provishions giving out, and the crickets eating up what little we had growing, and we a thousand miles away from suplies.'

Women and children went into the fields every day with tin pans, sticks, and bells to drive the insects away while men dug ditches and flooded rows to push the crickets into the water. Nothing stopped them.

On Sunday, probably June 4, 1848, Apostle Charles C. Rich was preaching outdoors when something changed. Meeks recorded what happened: 'While preaching, he says, "Brethr'n, we do not want you to part with your wagons and teams, for we might need them." Intimating he did not know but we might have to leave. That increased my solemnity. At that instant, I heard the voice of fowles flying overhead, that I was not acquainted with. I looked up and saw a flock of seven gulls. In a few minutes there was another larger flock passed over. They came fast and more of them until the heavens were darkened with them, and lit down in the valley till the earth was black with them, and they would eat crickets and throw them up again and fill themselves again and right away throw them up again. A little before sundown, they left for Salt Lake, for they roosted on a sand bar. A little after sunrise in the morning, they came back again and continued that course until they had devoured the crickets.'

The crickets were gone. 'I guess this circumstance changed our feeling considerable for the better,' Meeks wrote.

The sea gulls returned again in 1849 and in 1852 during subsequent cricket plagues. In 1913, the Sea Gull Monument was erected on Temple Square to commemorate the event. The California gull became the official Utah state bird.