Inside the Burr Oak museum, artifacts include pioneer tools and artwork, staged in scenes to illustrate life in Laura’s day. In the end, though, the family celebrated the birth of the youngest Ingalls sister, Grace.īeyond her stories, Laura Ingalls Wilder leaves a legacy of can-do spirit and gratitude for community. The Ingalls family arrived penniless, for example, after two years of crop failure in Minnesota, and in that year, suffered the death of 9-month-old Freddie Ingalls. In reality, the Ingalls’ stay in Burr Oak bore both hardship and happiness that still resonate with the more than 6,000 visitors who discover the “link” today.

“Laura would say, ‘A good writer doesn’t involve too many characters.’” Or more simply, ‘backtracking’ into Northeastern Iowa didn’t follow the books’ narrative of pioneer expansion into the American West. The Masters Hotel, which appears on the National Register of Historic Places, is the only childhood home of Laura Ingalls Wilder that remains on its original site.īut why is it “missing”? The author herself was known to pare down fact for the sake of the storyline, says Barb Olson, director of the modern-day Laura Ingalls Wilder Park & Museum in Burr Oak. In 1876-77, Laura, with her parents, Charles and Caroline, and sisters, relocated to Burr Oak as caretakers of the Masters Hotel, a property owned by family friends from another famous stop on the ‘Laura trail’ - Walnut Grove, Minnesota, site of Laura’s book On the Banks of Plum Creek.īurr Oak is often referred to as “The Missing Link” in the Little House book series, between the family’s homestead in Minnesota and their pursuit of a fresh start in De Smet, South Dakota. But long before that Laura captured hearts on screen, the real Laura Ingalls lived out a year of her childhood here in the Driftless, in the village of Burr Oak, Iowa. Mention pioneer-era writer “Laura Ingalls Wilder” and most people flash to a 9-year-old girl in a brown calico pinafore laughing and tumbling down a prairie hillside, as in the 1980s TV series.

Laura ingalls wilder