A little off the beaten path, just south of Independence, Kansas is a roadside attraction that’s worth the stop. Little House on the Prairie Museum sits on privately owned land and is one of the many childhood home sites of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Robert and I happened to be in southeastern Kansas and saw the little speck on the map. We didn’t know what to expect, but it intrigued us. We had to be careful to follow the signs off of Hwy 75, or we would have missed it.
What we found when we arrived were four little buildings: a white farm house, a log cabin, a post office, and a schoolhouse. The white farm house turned out to be a quaint gift shop. Robert and I really enjoyed visiting with the two lovely ladies working in the shop.
We learned that this particular site was where Baby Carrie was born. The Ingalls family lived there roughly from 1869 to 1871. The log cabin on the property is a replica of their home, reconstructed in 1977 after a historian discovered Charles Ingalls hand dug well, confirming the location of the homestead.
Although not original to the property, other buildings were moved to the property from nearby locations to save them from destruction and to preserve their history. The post office is from the nearby small town of Wayside and was constructed in 1885 and was operational up until 1984. The one room schoolhouse was built in 1871 about 4 ½ miles from the Ingalls’ homestead. The Ingalls children didn’t attend the school as they were too young. The school was active up until 1947.
What a pleasant place to stop and stretch our legs. The day was beautiful, the people were friendly and the history contained in those little buildings was fantastic.
