Special Places To Visit: Walnut Grove Minnesota

    Off the beaten path, that is north of I-90, in southern Minnesota is the little town of Walnut Grove. You may be saying to yourself, "That place sounds familiar." Well it should as it was made famous as the location of the homestead of the Laura Ingalls Wilder family and mentioned in her books.

   Cathy and I decided to see this place because we both loved the show on TV, but I never really read any of her books.  Since we were heading out west we decided to head north first into Minnesota and see what Walnut Grove was all about.  We were not disappointed in the fact that the town remembered Laura Ingalls Wilder and it was basically the reason the town still existed, in my opinion.  Walnut Grove's population is around 800 and the main highway through the town is Highway 14.  It is a very pleasant town with very friendly people.  It was not hard at all to find the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum and that is where Cathy and I made our first stop.

 

   From the museum's website:

• The museum's collections are housed in a series of interesting buildings, including an 1898 depot, a chapel, an onion-domed house, dugout display, little red schoolhouse, early settler home, and covered wagon display.  Also on display are memorabilia from visits by the following stars from the "Little House on the Prairie" TV series.

   The museum and surrounding buildings held quite a bit of stuff concerning the Ingalls family.  I was amazed that anyone would want to homestead in a place whose winters are so rough.  After reading several family history items, I had a lot more respect for Charles Ingalls.  He had to be a hard worker and a man who cared very much for his family.  From the museum's web site:

•     Laura Ingalls lived 1.5 miles north of Walnut Grove along the banks of Plum Creek from 1874 to 1876.  Charles and Caroline Ingalls settled on the property in May 1874, declaring their intent to homestead it.  After three consecutive crop failures they decided not to complete the homestead process. Instead, they purchased the land in July 1876 from the United States for $413 and resold it immediately for $400 to Abraham Keller.
       The Ingalls family then moved to Burr Oak, Iowa to help the Steadmans operate the Masters Hotel.  However, hardships continued to follow the Ingalls.  Their only son, Charles Frederic, died en route at the age of nine months.  Seventy-one years later in 1947 Harold and Della Gordon purchased the 172 acre farm, unaware of its historical connection.  Garth Williams, an illustrator of Laura's books, had been following the Ingalls' trail in courthouse records.  He visited the Gordons in November 1947 and informed them that their new farm had been homesteaded by the Ingalls.  The unusual depression in the banks of Plum Creek was the location of the Ingalls dugout.
       The Gordon family continues to maintain access to the dugout site for Laura's fans.  Visitors can still identify the plum thickets, table lands, big rock, spring, and other sites that Laura describes in "On the Banks of Plum Creek".  The Gordons have left the dugout site as they found it in 1947.  The deep depression in the ground is all that remains of Laura's dugout home.  None of the buildings that Pa built remain nor is their exact location known.  About 25 acres of native grasses have been planted surrounding the dugout site since 1999 to enhance the visitor's experience.

   After visiting the museum Cathy and I toured around the town before leaving on Highway 14 to continue our western trek.  On the way out of town we stopped and stood beside Plum Creek, as the highway passed right over the creek. Little did I know that this would not be our last Laura Ingalls Wilder stop on this vacation, but you will have to read about that in another installment of "Special Places To Visit."