Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Homestead

When Erin was in third grade, one of her homeschool assignments was to write a report about a state. We made an agreement: if she did a great job, we would travel to the state she chose. Erin picked South Dakota, a place we had never visited, and her report became the beginning of a cross-country road trip.

Erin loved Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, so the Ingalls Homestead near De Smet was a stop we especially wanted to make. This was the land where Charles “Pa” Ingalls established his family’s homestead. The family arrived in the area in 1879, spent their first winter in the Surveyors’ House, and moved onto the homestead in the spring of 1880. Charles’s claim covered a quarter section, 160 acres of Dakota Territory prairie.

Standing there gave us a better sense of the place Laura later wrote about. The open land was beautiful, but it also made the family’s dependence on their crops, their animals, and one another easier to imagine. The homestead was where the Ingalls family tried to build a settled life, even as the harsh winter of 1880–81 forced them back into town for shelter. Today, the site uses reconstructed buildings and hands-on activities to help visitors picture daily life on the claim.

I remember Erin rolling down a hill at the homestead. After reading about Laura’s life and writing about South Dakota, she was simply enjoying being in the place. Seeing the prairie that formed the setting for books she loved made those stories more real to her.

What began as a third-grade report became a family journey across the country. The homestead gave Erin a connection between what she had learned, what she had read, and what she could now see for herself.