🔁 Lakeville Might Kill Its Problem Roundabout

Starting Tuesday, September 29th, the Scoop is going to one issue a week, every Tuesday morning.

Here's why. Twice a week meant some issues were packed and some were stretched thin. Once a week means every issue only has the stuff worth your time.

So here's what you'll get every Tuesday:

👉 What happened: the biggest decisions from last week's council, school board and planning meetings, in plain English

👉 What's coming: what's on the agenda this week & weekend, so you know before it's decided

👉 What to do: the best events around the south metro

👉 Plus more of the deeper local stories you all keep replying to

Same Scoop just packed into one email a week.

Reply to this email with your thoughts.

Lakeville's 185th and Kenwood Roundabout Is Getting "Mumble Strips" and a Big New Study

Crashes are happening almost weekly at the two-lane roundabout at Kenwood Trail and 185th Street, so Dakota County is adding "mumble strips" this weekend. A new study will also look at bigger fixes, including taking the roundabout out and putting a stoplight back.

Lakeville's 5-Year Project Plan: Here's What's Coming to Your Roads, Parks and Water

Lakeville plans to spend $88.1 million in 2027 alone, and the finance director's advice is "don't freak out." The list includes a $35 million water treatment plant and a full rebuild of Fire Station 3, and the debt levy goes up 30% in 2028.

Hastings Planners Say Yes to Pleasant Valley Farms 400-Home Plan

Up to 407 new homes could go up north of Hastings High School, between County Road 42 and Featherstone Road. The Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend the change, and the City Council votes on it tonight.

Eagan Honors 3 Strangers Who Pulled a Man From a Burning SUV

Just after midnight on June 29, an SUV hit a signal pole at Lone Oak Road and I-35E and burst into flames 15 feet high. A shuttle bus driver, one of his passengers and a passing driver broke a window with a wheel from the wreck and pulled the man inside to safety.

On June 12, 1873, farmers in southwestern Minnesota saw what looked like a snowstorm coming from the west.

Then they heard the roar.

It wasn't snow. It was wings. Millions of them. Rocky Mountain locusts descending on fields of knee-high wheat. By nightfall, those fields were bare.

The grasshoppers had arrived. They wouldn't leave for five years.

THE PLAGUE

From 1873 to 1877, locusts devastated Minnesota. They came in swarms so thick they blotted out the sun. They landed on everything. They ate everything.

Crops went first — wheat, corn, oats, barley. Then the grasshoppers moved on to stranger fare. Wool off live sheep. Laundry off clotheslines. Wooden handles off pitchforks and hoes. One Kansas woman reported they ate the green stripes right out of her dress while she was wearing it.

The sound was constant. "You could hear a peculiar sound as they were eating," one survivor recalled.

In 1876 alone, the swarms visited 40 Minnesota counties and destroyed 500,000 acres of crops. Over the five years, farmers lost 5.8 million bushels of wheat — worth $68 million in today's dollars.

THE RESPONSE

Farmers tried everything.

The Simpson Locust Crusher — a wooden contraption dragged by horses — scooped up and pulverized insects. The Adams Locust Pan drowned them in oil. The "hopperdozer" trapped them on metal sheets coated with coal tar or molasses.

Nothing worked.

In 1877, the legislature passed a law requiring every able-bodied man in infested counties to spend one day a week for five weeks destroying grasshopper eggs.

Then Governor Pillsbury tried something else. On April 9, 1877, he proclaimed April 26 a statewide day of prayer. Businesses closed. Churches filled.

That spring, a late snowstorm hit. It damaged billions of buried eggs. By August, the surviving locusts flew off. They never came back.

THE EXTINCTION

Here's the strangest part: the Rocky Mountain locust no longer exists.

The species that terrorized the Great Plains — that formed swarms covering thousands of square miles — went extinct. The last specimens were collected in the early 1900s. Scientists still debate exactly why. The best theory: farmers plowing the Rocky Mountain valleys destroyed their breeding grounds.

The creature that nearly broke Minnesota farming simply vanished from the earth.

THE MEMORY

Laura Ingalls Wilder was seven years old when the plague began. Her family lived in Walnut Grove, in Redwood County. She fictionalized the experience in On the Banks of Plum Creek, published in 1937.

The grasshoppers left marks across the state — not in monuments, but in stories passed down through families. In the historical society archives. In the memory of what the land could do to the people trying to tame it.

Minnesota's farmers rebuilt. The state's wheat industry recovered. But for five summers, the sky went dark, and there was nothing anyone could do but pray.

WHERE TO SEE IT

Minnesota History Center — 345 W Kellogg Blvd, St. Paul. The Minnesota Historical Society holds extensive archives on the grasshopper plagues, including farmer diaries and Governor Pillsbury's papers.

Assumption Chapel (Grasshopper Chapel) — 22912 Chapel Hill Road, Cold Spring. Built in 1877 to honor the Virgin Mary after the plague ended; rebuilt in 1951 after a tornado destroyed the original.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum — 330 8th Street, Walnut Grove. The town where Wilder lived during the plague years.

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Price: $1,195,000

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FEATURE AN EVENT

Wishes & More Charity Golf Tournament (Hastings)
Inver Grove Brewing and Lakeville Brewing are teaming up for a charity golf day for kids with life-threatening illnesses, and they're teeing off at 10am. Swing for a cause.

Breaking Benjamin (Shakopee)
Breaking Benjamin brings Chevelle, Starset and Kami Kehoe to Mystic Lake for a stacked night of rock starting at 6pm. Rock out.

Wild Workouts: Pilates (Apple Valley)
Pilates at the Minnesota Zoo is a thing, and it's $15 for members or $20 for everyone else (ages 16+, bring a mat, register by Monday). Find your zen.

The Initials Game Live at Badger Hill (Shakopee)
The Initials Game podcast brings its live trivia to Badger Hill at 6:30pm, so grab a pint and your smartest friends. Test your brain.