No road, not even the faintest trace of wheels or of a rider’s passing, could be seen anywhere. That prairie looked as if no human eye had ever seen it before. Only the tall wild grass covered the endless empty land and a great empty sky arched over it. – from Little House on the Prairie

The Trail Left Laura Followed

Like many other pioneer families, the Ingalls seldom lingered long in any one place. Laura’s stories began in the big woods of Wisconsin. After leaving the Kansas grasslands, the Ingalls lived in Minnesota, in South Dakota, and even for a time in Nebraska. Laura herself relocated to the Missouri Ozarks after her marriage to Almanzo Wilder. The Ingalls lived on the Kansas prairies during 1869 and 1870. Although they had made a life there, the family learned that they had settled by mistake three miles into the Osage Reserve; land set aside for the Osage tribe. Official relocations of any settlers within those boundaries were scheduled. Charles Ingalls didn’t wait and instead loaded up his household goods within a day of learning of the official decision. Ironically, six months later the Osage were relocated into Oklahoma, then Indian Territory, and settlers allowed back into the region. The Ingalls could have reclaimed the land they homesteaded. By then, however, they were settled in Walnut Grove, Minnesota and did not return.

When Laura Ingalls Wilder began chronicling her childhood in a series of books, she had no way to know that her books would rank among classic children’s literature or be translated in more than forty languages. She wrote her stories down at the suggestion of her daughter, journalist Rose Wilder Lane, to preserve the past. Her tales of pioneer life fired the imaginations of children worldwide and inspired a long running television series titled Little House on the Prairie. Starring Michael Landon as Charles Ingalls, the program remains popular in syndication.

As years past and the fame of Laura’s simple books spread, Kansas residents began to wonder where the little house on the prairie had been. Years of research yielded land records and other information that determined the site was near Wayside. By 1977 Margaret Clement and Eilene Charbo of the Kansas State Historical Society had documented the exact location. The Ingalls appeared in an 1870 census of the area. Volunteers built a cabin on the spot and based it on Laura’s descriptions in the book. Although there was no doubt as to validity of the site, the discovery of Charles Ingalls' hand dug well confirmed the location.