This is most likely a reference not to grasshoppers but to the Rocky Mountain Locust, which had a massive swarm starting in July 1874 that stretched from North Dakota to Texas and caused massive damage to agriculture. A second swarm hit in 1875, with smaller swarms to 1877, causing about $200 million in damage and at its height featuring a swarm estimated to weigh 27 million tons and include 12 trillion(!!) insects.

Weather conditions can cause locust species to swarm periodically, and every continent experiences locust swarms to this day - except North America. This is because the Rocky Mountain Locust is now extinct, with the last living specimens collected in 1902.

I wrote more about Rocky Mountain Locusts and their extinctions in an answer here.