Visiting Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Rocky Ridge Farm

Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home & Museum

Address: 3060 State Rte A, Mansfield, MO 65704

Phone: (417) 924-3626

Opened: 1895
Area: 9.9 acres
Architectural style: American Craftsman
Added to NRHP: May 19, 1970

Website

The First Thing I Noticed was the Wildflowers…

We pulled into Rocky Ridge Farm, just outside Mansfield, Missouri, and there they were, spilling along the front of the property in a loose, easy tangle. No tidy rows. No landscaper’s hand. Just native blooms doing as they pleased, the way they might have a hundred years ago. For a moment, it felt like we’d driven straight onto a prairie. I thought it was a nice touch and gave it no more thought than that. I had no idea those flowers would mean something to me by the time we left.

Now, a confession to get us started. I have never read a single one of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. I rarely caught the television show either. My interest in the late 1970s was Star Wars, and it captivated me. My wife Jenny, on the other hand, has loved those stories her whole life. We’d come down to Missouri for the Baker Creek Seeds Spring Festival, and when Jenny learned that the author of “Little House on the Prairie” had a home just a few miles to the east, well, that settled the itinerary. I tagged along mostly to watch her enjoy it. What I did not expect was to become the one who couldn’t stop asking questions.

Start With the Film

Your visit begins in a room in the lobby with a short documentary about Laura’s life and the land. It’s a fine way to start. By the time the lights came up, I’d gone from polite bystander to genuinely curious, which, if you know me, is my natural condition.

Then you tour the museum, which is packed with historical artifacts from Laura’s life, family, and career.

The Significance of the Fiddle

This isn’t a stand-in or a careful replica. It’s the actual fiddle that Charles “Pa” Ingalls played, the very one. Out on the frontier, there was no radio and no recorded music, so when the day’s work was done, and the light went low, Pa’s fiddle was the family’s entertainment, their comfort, and a little of their church too. He’d play the old songs to lift everyone’s spirits, “Oh! Susanna,” “Buffalo Gals,” a hymn when the moment called for it. In the books, that instrument is practically the beating heart of the whole family. Pa always promised it to Laura, and she kept it as a treasured heirloom for the rest of her days.

The fiddle itself carries a humble little secret. It’s a factory-made German violin from around 1850, and inside it bears a label claiming to be an Amati, one of the great and valuable names in the violin world. In truth, it’s a common, mass-produced copy. Which strikes me as just about perfect. An ordinary instrument, worth next to nothing to an appraiser, and yet priceless for the hands that held it and the family it held together.

One thing worth knowing before you go, because it trips a lot of folks up. The fiddle you might remember from the television show was only a prop, since Michael Landon was acting when he played it, and that prop lives at a different museum up in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. The genuine article, Pa’s real fiddle, is here in Mansfield. Jenny knew the difference the instant she saw it. I don’t think she’d dared expect to find herself standing three feet from the real thing, and the look on her face when she realized it was something I won’t soon forget.

Following the Museum, Visit the Two Homes

I always make a point of chatting with the guides at places like this, because the good ones carry the stories that never make it onto the placards. The quirky details. The small human moments. That’s where the real history lives, if you ask me.

The receptionist gave us insight into what to expect as we venture out to see Laura’s home…

Two Houses, Some Very Old Trees, and a Career Born Late

There are actually two homes on the property, and as we walked the path between them under enormous old trees, I kept wondering whether any of them had been standing when the Wilders were. Probably so. Trees like that keep a memory all their own.

One of the first things you will likely be warned about, and your body learns, is to duck. Everything in the houses sits low. Low doorways, low counters, low everything. You’ll REALLY notice it when you see the showerhead!

Laura stood barely 4’11”, and Almanzo wasn’t much taller, so the whole place was built to their scale. I’m certainly no NBA center myself, and even I spent the afternoon mindful of my forehead. There’s something oddly moving in that. You don’t just read about a small woman who lived a big life. You feel her size in the height of her own doorways.

Laura lived in a good many places across the Midwest before Missouri, but this farm is the one that matters most. The family came here in 1894, drawn south by the promise of apple country, hoping to make a living growing fruit on a rocky patch of Ozark hillside. They’d already weathered more than their share by then. Illness, the loss of a baby boy, a house fire, hard years on the northern plains. You can’t tour this place without feeling the weight of what they carried to get here.

And here’s the part that stuck with me most. Laura didn’t publish her first book until she was 65 years old. Sixty-five. For most of her life, she was a farm wife and a newspaper columnist, doing the daily work of keeping a household and a farm going, her name unknown to the wider world. By many accounts, it was her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, herself a successful and influential writer, who urged her mother on and helped open the door to publishing. Rose’s own story turned out to be every bit as remarkable, and I left thinking the two of them made quite a pair.

What the Wildflowers Were Trying to Tell Me

We headed out later that afternoon, and on the way, I passed those wildflowers again. Only this time, I felt like I understood them better and we had a connection.

That little stretch of prairie out front wasn’t decoration. It was the whole point. Laura carried the prairie of her girlhood inside her for sixty-some years, quietly, while she churned butter, raised her daughter, and tended the orchard, until, late in life, it finally bloomed onto the page and into the hearts of millions. Those flowers had been waiting all along, the same as her stories were. Late bloomers, the both of them. There’s a good deal of hope in that, I think, for anyone who suspects they’ve gotten a late start on the thing they were meant to do.

Need A Peaceful, Historic Getaway?

You can Bank on a Great Time in Mansfield.

Driving back into Mansfield, we passed a beautiful old bank, and I caught myself wondering whether Laura had ever done her banking there. I’ll likely never know. But Jenny and I are already planning to visit the rest of her homes, so it seems I’ve got plenty of porches, financial institutions, and wildflowers left to be curious about.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

• She published her first book, “Little House in the Big Woods,” in 1932 at the age of 65.
• Her books went on to sell more than 60 million copies and have been translated into roughly 40 languages.
• She wrote 9 books in the core “Little House” series, and 5 of them earned the prestigious Newbery Honor.
• She was a distant relative of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
• After World War II, General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters in Japan had her book “The Long Winter” translated into Japanese to help lift the spirits of the struggling nation.