Little House Travels: Walnut Grove and Tracy

Time to hit the museum in town! I was told there are covered wagon fans that will collect the good pieces and parts of old wagons to build Superwagons to provide authentic, period-accurate pieces for sites like this.

One of Laura's sewing baskets and quilts. 

One of her sets of dishes. Pretty!

A replica of Willie's Noah's Ark playset that visiting children are allowed to enjoy. 

Pa's Big Green Book. 

The sites are just beginning to roll out exhibits celebrating the work of Garth Williams, who illustrated all nine books in the series back in the 40s and the First Four Years in the 70s when the manuscript was discovered.  

With "the wonderful house" long gone, exhibitors took on the task of reconstructing the house for museum purposes, to give us a sense of what the Ingalls' frame farmhouse would have looked like. Here's the bedroom on the first floor... 

...and here's the kitchen on the opposite wall. All that was missing was the step ladder Laura and Mary swung from to get to their attic bedroom.

The one-room schoolhouse is also long-gone, but a replica of the school was built on museum grounds with I believe many of the materials from the actual school. 

I respect the Gordons not rebuilding the dugout on their farm, but was pleased to experience a real dugout home at the museum. It was at least 10 degrees cooler inside, and surprisingly roomier than I thought. Of course, I was one person and not a family of five. 

Schoolhouse site is just someone’s house. Meh.

Pa's bell!

Depot in Tracy, where the family arrived after their first train ride. A look around for what would have passed for the hotel yielded nothing. 

On Laura's highway back to Brookings. 

The museum? It was okay. They had Pa’s Big Green Book, quilts, sewing baskets, china, and a couple pieces of Laura’s wedding silver. There was also a buffalo coat similar to Pa’s from that era, as well as a little fur muff and cape like the one Laura received from Reverend Alden. 

There was an entire room dedicated to artifacts from the TV show. Not my thing.

On the grounds, they had rebuilt a replica of Laura’s schoolhouse, a dugout, and a rebuild of the first floor of the wonderful farmhouse that was on the farm north of town after they moved out of the dugout. I appreciated that!

Going into what they called the “grandma house,” they had a display celebrating the illustrators for the Little House series, Garth Williams and Helen Sewell. Upstairs, they had a children’s playhouse that included the toys the Oleson children had, including Nellie’s china dolls, a tiny kitchen with patty pans, and Willie’s wooden ark. There was also a quiet place to sit and read the complimentary copies of the books.

I bought the usual trinkets at the gift shop - the new biography on Garth Williams, a couple of Christmas ornaments, and the pressed penny machine. I drove around town to find the Little House sites and found the church bell Pa donated his boot money for; it’s now in the Lutheran church. The site of the schoolhouse is just someone’s home. I drove Main Street to find the Oleson Merchantile or Nellie’s Cafe but found neither. It was time to move on. 

Heading west, I stopped at the train depot museum in Tracy, but the crew there was doing lawn work and the museum was closed. I still got my Shores of Silver Lake moment. 

I was done in Minnesota by mid-afternoon and booked it back west to Brookings, following the path Laura took in BTSOSL. She was tired after her day's travel, and I took a late lunch while contemplating what to do in Brookings for the night. Dinner? Shopping? Swim? 

I was dying to rescue a crocheted afghan, and with a return trip to Goodwill, mission accomplished. My ownership of the rainbow-striped beauty was short-lived, as Dave needed a last-minute gift for one of his employees. The mission was for a rescue, after all. 

I was eager to get in a swim and changed into my suit while watching the Braves game on TBS. I promptly fell asleep, missing both pool hours and dinner hours. I ended up eating the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I had saved. 

Next up, De Smet!