Little House on the Prairie Road Trip

In Search of Laura Ingalls Wilder

One obsession of mine since I was a young girl is anything and everything to do with Little House on the Prairie ! I read and reread the series by Laura Ingalls Wilder countless times as a kid and basically wanted to be Laura on the TV show. On our cross-country road trip, we tried to visit as many Little House sites as possible. Here are some thoughts and tips for like-minded Bonnet-heads!

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Road Trip through the Little House on the Prairie Sites

First of all, we haven’t gone to every single Laura Ingalls Wilder historical site, because there are soooo many. You can find a comprehensive list here http://www.laurasprairiehouse.com/sites/. Some of those were not in either the books or the TV show but are places where the Ingalls family lived or had some connection.

We did hit some of the biggies. We visited three major sites:

1. De Smet, SD – site of the Little Town on the Prairie.

2.  Walnut Grove and Plum Creek in Minnesota –where the TV series is supposed to take place and where the On Banks of Plum Creek book happens.

3. Pepin, WI – Where Laura was born and where the whole book series starts with Little House in the Big Woods.

Visiting the Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead

De Smet is the best Ingalls site. It hands down has the most to offer and is the only site at which I would recommend spending multiple days. There are several locations there: the homestead, which is outside of town; the Ingalls house in town that Pa built; the schoolhouse that Laura and Carrie attended; and a few other buildings that were around during their time there. They offer a variety of tours in town and from the homestead.

The Homestead consists of a Visitors’ Center/Store, a Watchtower, a dugout like the one in On the Banks of Plum Creek, Ma’s cabin, a barn, a one room school house and a few other buildings. Each spot has activities that would have been in the books and appropriate to the time period, like braiding rope, riding in a covered wagon, hay twisting, wheat grinding and more. The employees give historical information about each site/activity, and the kids get a lot of hands on – they can even dress up in the one room school house. On their website you can get a complete list of activities as well as pricing and special events info:  https://www.ingallshomestead.com/

Camping on the Homestead

We actually camped on the Laura Ingalls Wilder homestead! It was amazing, and we felt very lucky to have gotten a spot. There are several ways to stay on the homestead, but reservations fill up quickly. There are only 4 RV sites, with water and electricity (no sewer hookup but there’s a dumpsite on property) and a handful of tent sites. They also have covered wagons that have been converted into cabins for sleeping, they are really cute – my daughter made friends with a family who was staying in one, so she got to see what it looks like. 

Here’s what’s great about staying on the property: the kids have absolute freedom! On the Ingalls Homestead, after it closes and the visitors have all gone home for the day, the kids have free reign! There were several families there, so there were at least 8-10 other kids for my daughter to run around with. They just naturally found each other and ran around between the playground, the dugout, the barn, the watchtower, and the wide-open spaces of green grass.

It was summer, so it stayed light pretty late, and the kids were called back home periodically for dinner, etc. then went back out until dark. It reminded me of my childhood! There was a litter of kittens on the property, who were the most docile cats I’ve ever seen. They just let all the kids carry them around from spot to spot, each kid sort of claiming their own cat. Interestingly, the cats are available for adoption. At least one family went home with a kitten. All my child went home with was a rash, because she’s allergic to cats, but we decided to let her make that choice as part of our quest for giving her more freedom!

Touring the Ingalls Home

If you can’t stay on the homestead, I would recommend spending at least half the day there to do all the activities. The other places to visit are in town. Definitely take the tour of the Ingalls house – it’s the house Pa built in town and the one where Ma lived with Mary after Pa’s death. The tour includes touring the surveyor’s house from By the Shores of Silver Lake and the original schoolhouse. The tour was well worth it, and the shop there is probably better than the one at the homestead. Tour and ticket info can be found here: http://discoverlaura.org/

Every July, De Smet holds a Laura pageant, where the town puts on a play and people come from all over the world to watch. We weren’t lucky enough to be there during that time, but I would definitely go back for it! http://www.desmetpageant.org/

I actually have my complete set of the Little House on the Prairie books that I saved from my childhood. They’re probably worth something now, but they’re so much more valuable to me just for the memories. I’ve been reading them with my daughter and she loves them, too.

The Wilder Dugout at Plum Creek

We went to Walnut Grove, MN right after De Smet and we camped at the Plum Creek Park campground. It was very pretty and tucked away among the corn fields on the outskirts of town. Walnut Grove has a small museum with a great collection of Little House memorabilia – much of it from the TV show. You can also drive out to the site of the dugout the Ingalls lived in when they first arrived at Walnut Grove. This is in either the first or second episode of the TV series and in On the Banks of Plum Creek. The dugout is not there, but the site is marked, and you can walk along the real Plum Creek. It’s private property, but the family allows people to visit and even picnic there for a small fee (I think it was $5.) While we were there we saw a man doing maintenance work, and it turns out he was the owner. We talked to him for a while and he told us the whole story of the property and how it came to be in his family.

We enjoyed camping in Walnut Grove, but if you’re on a tighter schedule, I would recommend doing Walnut Grove as a day trip from De Smet. You can easily see everything in a day and make the drive back.

Little House in the Big Woods

We did not go directly to Pepin from Walnut Grove. We went there while we were staying in the Eau Claire/Chippewa Falls area of Wisconsin. From there, we made the drive to Pepin. In the town, there is a museum with antiques, children’s activities, a film and a shop. https://www.lauraingallspepin.com/  Every September they hold “Laura Days” which is a one weekend festival of crafts, activities, a bonfire, etc. We were there just a week ahead of it and were disappointed not to be able to stay. But here’s the information for next year’s festival https://www.lauradays.org/.

About 7 miles outside of Pepin is the Wayside Cabin, a replica of the Little House in the Big Woods where Laura Ingalls Wilder was born. It takes all of about 20 minutes to see it, so don’t schedule a whole lot of time for it. In fact, I would only go here if I were visiting other places in the area. Again, like with Walnut Grove, the Laura activities in Pepin will take you less than a day, so it was nice for us to find other interesting things to do in the area.

Seeing all of these Laura Ingalls Wilder sites definitely satisfied a need in me to immerse myself in a treasured aspect of my childhood and to share that with my family. Since then, we’ve been watching the whole TV series on DVD, and we’ve been experimenting with recipes from the Prairie Cookbook written by Melissa Gilbert. The corn chowder is to die for!

I’d love to about hear your Little House memories or any trips you’ve taken to the sites. Please feel free to comment!