Visiting Laura: The Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Walnut Grove, MN

While we were on vacation last month, we stumbled across the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Walnut Grove, MN.  I hadn’t realized we would be near any of the Laura Ingalls Wilder sites on this trip, let alone that we would pass right though Walnut Grove.  I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books when I was growing up, so despite the fact that we had a very long drive ahead of us, I just had to stop and tour the museum.

Walnut Grove is the town nearest to the Ingalls’ Plum Creek dugout, the sod house dug into a hillside above a creek which features in On the Banks of Plum Creek.   The actual dugout site is several miles out of town; while it is open to the public, access is via a dirt road, and between our tight schedule and our heavily laden van, we decided to pass on visiting it.  I did take a picture of Plum Creek from the Rt. 14 bridge, a few miles downstream.

The Ingalls moved to the Walnut Grove area in 1874.  In 1876, they left to run the Masters Hotel in Burr Oak, Iowa (where Grace was born.)  They returned to Walnut Grove in 1878 before moving to DeSmet in what is now South Dakota in 1979.

Although the Ingalls weren’t in Walnut Grove for as long as they were in Wisconsin (Little House in the Big Woods) or South Dakota (all the books from Little Town on the Prairie through The First Four Years), they were an important part of the fledgling community.  For instance, Charles Ingalls (Pa) donated a substantial sum toward the bell of Walnut Grove’s first little church.

Like most places associated with Laura Ingalls Wilder, Walnut Grove has a museum dedicated to her and her books.  The museum has been combined with a collection of early and replica buildings and another museum about the history of Walnut Grove itself.   The entire complex takes up about a block of this small town.  You enter through a large gift shop which sells everything from the Laura Ingalls Wilder books to stick candy, T-shirts, and prairie-style bonnets and outfits for both people and dolls.  There’s a fee to enter the museum proper, which consists of three or four rooms.  The first displays items owned by or similar to those owned by Laura herself, plus photographs and other memorabilia related to her parents’ families and to the Wilders (her husband Almanzo’s family.)  I found this room the most interesting.  (Unfortunately, photos were not allowed in this portion of the museum.)

Another room contains a collection of dolls both antique and modern, many in 19^th’-century dress, while a third focuses on the writings of both Laura and her daughter Rose – not just the Little House books, but articles.  (Both women wrote for various journals and newspapers.)   Finally there is a room dedicated to Little House on the Prairie TV show memorabilia.

Outside, there is a collection of buildings including “Grandma’s House,” a Victorian-era farm house with typical furnishings.  The collection of laundry tubs, wringers, etc. made me very thankful for my electric washer and dryer at home!  There is also a space where children can explore “the Plum Creek experience.”

Then there are the replica buildings: a sod house, smaller than some walk-in closets; a replica one-room schoolhouse similar to those which Laura and her sisters would have attended (and Laura would have taught in, though by then the Ingalls were living in DeSmet, SD); a two-room “settler’s house” typical of early farms and small towns in the Plains; and a tiny chapel, perhaps intended to evoke the first Walnut Grove church.

The final building houses exhibits related to Walnut Grove’s history not specifically related to the Ingalls family: a homesteader’s wagon and the tools and supplies he and his family would have brought; farm implements;  railroad memorabilia (the railroad still runs through Walnut Grove); early printing presses and other machinery used by Walnut Grove’s local paper; and a general store exhibit.

Between the buildings is a small open space filled with tall grasses and wildflowers native to the Plains, which gives a small hint of what the Plains must have looked like before the settlers came.

The entire complex trades a little heavily on the Laura Ingalls Wilder connection, given that the Ingalls were only in the Walnut Grove area for a few short years, broken by their months in Iowa.  Still, it’s interesting, fun, and definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area or passing through.  In July, the town hosts a “Wilder Pageant”, often attended by one or more cast members from the TV show.

Location:  Walnut Grove, Minnesota  (about 25 miles west of Springfield on Rt. 14)