SPANISH FORK, Utah — Not far from Main Street and the new houses that seem to be sprouting everywhere, grassy farm fields hold a summertime secret that thousands of people ache to see. It makes adults feel like kids again. It makes kids believe in a bit of magic.
Only a lucky few dozen get invitations nightly. And at the farm that Diane Thompson Garcia’s family has owned for five generations, they are greeted like old friends.
Garcia is the guardian of the glow.
Advertisement
She leads visitors down a narrow trail after dusk disappears on a long June day. There often are gasps as they glimpse the first firefly of the night — for many, the first they’ve ever seen. Yet for the grown-ups who didn’t think lightning bugs existed in Utah and for the children who can’t believe such tiny, flickering creatures exist at all, Garcia is more than just a guide.
As darkness settles, she begins to tell her story. Then the fireflies start the show.
All Garcia wanted back in 2017 was for people to witness the fireflies on her Utah County farm before they were gone. Despite her many pleas to city leaders, it seemed inevitable that the development coming ever closer to her 24-acre farm would lead to more traffic and bright lights, the kind of environment that extinguishes a firefly population forever.
“I thought, I can’t fight this anymore,” Garcia recalled. “Maybe I should let people enjoy them until we lose them.”
Fireflies need dark skies to spot one another’s glow and create the next generation. But that can be hard to find in a place like Spanish Fork, an hour south of Salt Lake City. A quarter-century ago, the population just topped 20,000. It’s now more than doubled.
The decline of fireflies is hardly just a Utah problem. Across the country, their numbers appear to be rapidly shrinking despite the efforts of people like Garcia to protect them. She doesn’t use any pesticides in her fields, but she does build fences and plant trees to create a patch of dark sky for them — while inviting in neighbors and strangers alike. The waiting list to visit her farm come June and July now exceeds 10,000 people.
Advertisement
“When you experience fireflies up close like this, you become their advocate,” she said.
At dusk on a recent Thursday, about 30 guests sat around Garcia’s campfire, some roasting marshmallows, a sense of anticipation in the air.
“They were a key part of my childhood,” said Jordan Fackrell, 45, who grew up in Kansas and now lives in Santaquin, Utah. He and his wife waited with their 4-year-old son and infant twins as night fell. “I want them to have that same feeling of magic I had as a kid.”
Across the campfire, 15-year-old Jenna Hullinger said she’d dreamed of seeing fireflies since she was little. She had volunteered on the farm with classmates from Independence High School in nearby Provo to earn her invitation to see the fireflies.
Until tonight, she’d only seen them in movies where “they looked like stars,” she remembered.
Around 9:30 p.m., Garcia started tracing the history of Thompson Century Farm, which recently was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
“Tonight you’re not only experiencing a historical farm, but you’re experiencing something that has been a part of nature here … for hundreds of years,” she said. “Fireflies need three things for the perfect environment. Who can tell me what that is?”
Children began to whisper.
“Darkness, wet ground and tall grass,” 10-year-old James Barth piped up.
“Yes!” Garcia said, proceeding to explain a bit about the short period at the end of the adult insects’ life cycle that makes them so unique. “The boy fireflies will fly through the air and blink. The girl fireflies will climb up on the tall grasses and — if they think he’s cute enough — they’ll blink back.”
Advertisement
She laid out some rules for the evening: Stay away from the baby deer, don’t chase the skunks and leave the nesting sandhill cranes alone. And, of course, cup the fireflies gently and briefly.
Share this articleShare“Adults, you are the children tonight,” Garcia said. “You can run around the fields and catch a firefly. You can stay as long as you want.”
The group moved quickly down the grassy trail, letting their eyes adjust as the crickets chirped. Screams of delight drifted over the tall grass as the group spread out into the shadows.
“I got it!” yelled one kid. “I got one!” cried another.
Hadlee Anderson quietly watched the twinkling display with her mother.
“Everything is so digital nowadays. Everyone’s got their phone in their faces,” the 19-year-old said. “It’s nice to see something real that God made. It’s so much more beautiful.”
The group followed the fireflies for almost two hours, weaving in and out of the darkness. It was long after 11 p.m. when parents called for their children to come back. Time to go home. Yet many were reluctant to leave — no matter what their age.
“It’s like a fairy tale come true,” said Reed Younger, 31, who grew up in Spanish Fork but had never before seen a firefly. “I never thought I would experience it.”
While Garcia may be an expert now, she had never seen a firefly until she was in her early 40s. She was born in Utah, grew up in California and returned to this state after a divorce. She’d studied agriculture at Southern Utah University and so in 1999 began running the family farm, which her great-great-grandfather, Samuel Thompson, started in 1852.
“I guess it was in my DNA,” says Garcia, whose full-time job is assessing farmland for Utah County.
She was in the fields, irrigating at night, when she saw her first firefly. It was like seeing a priceless treasure, an experience she wanted to share. What began as a few nights for friends, family and church groups exploded seven years ago — thanks in part to a popular Facebook group — into a four- or five-week commitment every night during firefly season.
Volunteers on the farm get priority on her invites. They cut trails, build fences and plant trees to help obscure the light. They clear brush, plant flowers and move logs. All of this helps her protect fireflies and lighten Garcia’s load for the free tours she gives to nearly 1,000 visitors each summer.
Advertisement
“That woman is tireless — she is a force for good on so many levels,” said Christy Bills, the Invertebrate Collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Utah. “She’s giving an avenue to let people experience this wonder.”
Bills, who founded the Western Firefly Project, a citizen science project to track where fireflies exist in the West, said sightings have now been confirmed in 27 of Utah’s 29 counties.
“We forget there’s a lot of magic all around us, right in our backyard,” she said.
Garcia’s enthusiasm appears to be infectious. More than 150 people recently attended the Spanish Fork Library’s first all-ages Firefly Festival, which included a glow rave in the children’s room.
The city has even begun to respond to Garcia’s concerns, changing construction standards in 2021 to require that streetlights and exterior lights on new city facilities and private businesses be dark-sky compliant by shining downward.
“I remember going down and walking through her fields,” said Chris Thompson, the Spanish Fork public works director. “I was like, this is a fantastic thing in our community — we should protect it.”
A similar transformation is what Garcia hopes is happening every night at her farm. She’s especially focused on educating the state’s youngest citizens.
“My goal is that kids will grow up in Utah and know there’s fireflies and know what to do to protect them,” she said.
Even if new homes grow right to the edge of her farm, Garcia is determined to make sure the fireflies in her fields survive.
If so, she hopes, “it’s going to be like the secret garden.”
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLuiwMiopWhqYGeBcHyVaGlrZ5aev6ayy6KcrGWlqa6pecWaqaZllJ6ur7GMoJirm5mWfA%3D%3D