Website: http://lauraingallswilderhome.com/
Physical address: 3060 Highway A, Mansfield, Missouri 65704
Phone number: +1 877 924 7126
Business hours: March 1 – November 15: Monday to Saturday 9am – 5pm; Sunday 12:30pm – 5pm. Closed Easter Sunday.
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Laura Ingalls Wilder is most famous for the itinerant lifestyle her family led when she was a child, crossing the woods and prairies of America’s Midwest (and, of course, for her accounts of this time, immortalised in the Little House on the Prairie series of children’s books). As such, there are numerous museums dedicated to her travels scattered across the states where her family spent time. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home & Museum, in Mansfield, MO, is significant, however, in that it was not part of the Ingalls family journey, but the place where Laura and her husband, Almanzo, bought land, built a home, and lived out their adult lives.
It was also the place where the Little House books were written.
Known as Rocky Ridge Farm, the original building on the 16ha property was a single-room cabin, constructed while the couple still lived in Mansfield itself, and which gradually evolved into a fully formed farmhouse by 1913. Almanzo completed much of the work himself, with help from his wife and local carpenters, and it was the work of decades for the couple to enlarge the property and develop it from a rocky wilderness to a working farm, complete with an orchard and stables.
In addition to the Rocky Ridge homestead, museum visitors can also see Rock Cottage, a stone house with modern conveniences, built on the same property as the farmhouse, by the Wilders’ daughter, Rose. Rose was also an author, and is credited with having encouraged her mother to start writing down her childhood memories. Laura and Almanzo lived at Rock Cottage from 1928, when it was constructed, until 1936, when they returned to their farmhouse, and the Little House books, published during the mid-1930s, were a product of this time.
The museum has been carefully maintained and protected since Laura’s death in 1957, and contains a plethora of items belonging to the author, including hand-written drafts of her stories, the desk where she wrote, letters, first edition books, and even Mary’s slate and Pa’s fiddle.
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