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Knife Point Glacier

Along with other glaciers in the Wind River Range, Knife Point Glacier's rapid retreat since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850 has exposed the remains of numerous specimens of the now believed to be extinct Rocky Mountain locust (Melanoplus spretus) and other related species.

Rocky Mountain locust

Another vivid portrayal of the depredations of the locust can be found in Ole Edvart Rølvaag's Giants in the Earth, based in part on his own experiences and those of his wife's family.

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A fictionalized description of the devastation created by Rocky Mountain locusts in the 1870s can be found in the novel On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder, though the description is based on actual incidents that happened to her family in western Minnesota during the summers of 1874 and 1875.

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Sightings often placed their swarms in numbers far larger than any other species of locust, with one famed sighting estimated at 198,000 square miles (513,000 km²) in size (greater than the area of California), weighing 27.5 million tons, and consisting of some 12.5 trillion insects – the greatest concentration of animals ever speculatively guessed, according to Guinness World Records.

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