Razzberry Hill: Little Town on the Prairie

I hope you know you can click on any photo to see a larger version.

That surely helps in seeing the details.

It's time to visit the Little Town on the Prairie!

Good morning prairie. It was a beautiful calm morning. Crisp. Not frosty but cool. Jacket weather.

I went first thing to the cemetery which I found with no problems.
I was a little surprised to see how far out of town it was.

I guess they do get a lot of visitors.
(see all the water in the field on the horizon?)

This is the headstone the Ingalls family bought for Charles.
I tried to get close to see what it said.
It was pretty weathered.

Here is the entire headstone.

Ma's grave and headstone.

Laura's son's grave. Did they not name him?
How sad.
I wonder if they had some mitochondrial problem in the family since all the women lost their boy babies.

Mary's grave.

Carrie's grave.
(I still think of her as a young girl.)

All the women have the same style headstone.
Were they purchased locally or were they made recently?

The general store owner.

A member of the Power family. Mary Power's brother?

The Boast headstone.
The individual stones are shown below for Mr. Boast and his wife Ella.

Mr. Owen

Reverend Brown who married Laura and Almanzo.

None of Laura's friends from school are buried here. Ida Brown married and moved to Bellingham, WA.
Mary Power also married and moved away, I think to CA. Good for them. I'm glad they were able to travel.

The marker for Almanzo's tree claim. No house remains.
Apparently no trees either!

This is how far away it is from town.
The railroad is on this side of town so it is fairly close.

The train depot. Or at least the new depot. The original one burned down.

Here it is, downtown De Smet. Like any other small town.
I can imagine it in the winter with horse drawn sleds.
Or in the spring with deep, deep mud.
I stopped at Ward's for breakfast.
It was recommended to me by the ladies at the visitor center.

Here is the Ward's history.

I found that I had a big hole in my air pad. I went to the hardware store to get duct tape. The elderly owner helped me and must have felt sorry for me. I asked if there was a store in town that sold blankets since it was supposed to get colder that night. He said he would run home and give me one but didn't have any since they had given all his extras to the campground at the last early frost. He directed me to go to the new Dollar General store. He also gave me this tape for my air pad and wouldn't take any money. Small town generosity.

The location of the original Loftus General store.

Looking across from the Loftus store is the hardware store where I was given the tape.
I was told the bank building to the left is the location of the original store that Laura's dad built when they arrived to town. That is the building they lived in after they moved out of the Surveyor's House and where it snowed before he had it sealed in and the girls had snow on their bed. (I can't imagine how cold that was)

A photo of the original Loftus store.
It is now a gift shop/flower store.

The De Smet Bulldogs have the same colors as my high school!
That is kinda cool.

The store owner showed me this box and shoe.
It was found in the basement of the general store

I'd guess around 1915???

Then it was back to the Ingall's Homestead to do the activity tour with the local school group.
For $15 it was pretty fun.
It was fun to see the kids participate and listen to their comments.
Several moms came up and asked me which kid was mine.
I said none and that I was just a tourist who was invited to join their group.
The other moms were very nice and we laughed and enjoyed the tour together.

Rope making.
(I have several videos but can't get them to load darn it)

They let the kids take turns driving the wagons.
There were two wagons. This one pulled by horses and another pulled by mules.

Mr. Rooster was showing off.
He was crowing when the sun rose and I was taking my sunrise pictures.

Our wagon ready to load up.

The tour lady split everyone into two groups.
Boys and girls.
I joined the boys group since it was smaller.
(I also didn't want to hear shrieking girls all day)

Boys will be boys.
Trying to see how far he can bend the rules of staying in the wagon.

The boys sang "It's raining tacos" as we drove down to the schoolhouse.
We were weaving right and left and it seemed we never went straight.
If back in the day the wagons were driven like this the pioneers would have taken years to get to their destination.

These are big horses.
Draft horses. I was told they are Percheron horses.

The white one was fussy.
This one was sweet.

The tour lady dressed up as a school teacher and boy was she good.
She whipped the kids into shape quickly. She was cute with her MinneSOta accent.
She would have made a good teacher.

I stopped in the visitors center before I went into town.
They showed me a book they had which is the same book Laura's dad used to read stories to them.

They opened it up to the story about the Auk.
I always thought it strange that something like an Auk would be found on a lake in South Dakota.

Then it was back to town for the 2:00 tour of the buildings which were prominently spoken of in the books.
The Surveyor's House
The Brewster School
The De Smet schoolhouse
and also the house Charles built for Caroline.
It was not mentioned in the books because he built it for her after Laura left home.

Here it is, the Surveyor's House.

We went in the front door and there was a stairwell just on our right.
We couldn't go up it (wood was too old for tourist traffic) but they had a mirror set up so we could see how it was set up for the girls to sleep.

They had a chain across it to keep people out.

When you first walked in you saw the doorway to a bedroom.

This is where Laura's parents slept.

There was then a piano, the stairwell to the upstairs and then the pantry.

The pantry was also chained off.

The bedroom was chained off but you could look in and take pics.

It was strange to think that this is where her parents slept.

Not in this bed but in this room.

In front of the pantry was this little table with all the ingredients of the first meal the family had which Laura noted in her book.

This part of the book was noted by the pantry.

It was chained off but of course you could look in and take pics and imagine what it looked like when the Ingall's family first saw it.

Another whatnot.

I don't know where the original one is.

They also had a shepherdess lady.

This one is supposed to look like the one Ma had.

A representation of the stove.

Our tour guide and one of the other tourists.

There were 3 of them. Man, wife and possibly sister.

They were from Sweden and currently live in Tanzania.

They were visiting the U.S. and specifically came to De Smet to do the tour and visit the town because of the books they read. The books were published in something like over 100 languages.

This was a perfect example of how far reaching the stories were.

Examples of twisted slough grass.

Good examples too!

An exterior small room was added on the other side of the house.

It was noted on the outer wall of the original house that this is what the original exterior looked like.

We were also told that it was THIS door that Laura and her family first went through when they arrived, not the door we came through which was on the opposite side of the building.

The markings on the floor denote the typical dimensions of a claim shanty.

About the size of my work room.

Bah ha ha ha ha!

This room also contained multiple items from that time period.

They did a good job to visually show what was used back then and what it was for.

Not the original but a replication of the Brewster school.

The one where Almanzo was courting Laura.

The LIW Association felt it was important to include this.

It was not open at the time so we didn't see the inside.

THIS is a building I have been waiting to see.

THE original schoolhouse.

The one Laura and Carrie attended.

The one where Eliza Jane taught.

Where Laura rocked the school desk and they were almost all lost when the blizzard hit.

Some of the walls were exposed to show original features such as chalkboards.

There appeared to be chalkboards on every wall.

Another example of twisted hay.

A portion of the Long Winter book describing hay twisting.

Laura's drawing of when they were almost lost on the prairie in the blizzard.

Exposed chalkboards.

Original floorboards.

You can see holes where desks were screwed in.

Original wall boards.

I always found this photo fascinating.

In 2010 we had this much snow.

We had 8 foot drifts and they were packed tight by the wind.

I had to kick and chisel out footholds to climb up on top of the drifts.

Once I got up on top, I could jump up and down as hard as I could and my feet didn't sink at all into the snow. It was packed solid.

I imagined that was what the snow drifts were like around the train during the Hard Winter.

It took a front end loader to dig us out.

The people of De Smet had to wait for Mother Nature to do all the work.

These three buildings were nicely displayed on this large lot.

To the left was the visitor center which had a room full of local info about the town, Laura's family, family items, newspaper clippings and copies of legal documents. You could spend hours in there going through it all.

Then we drove over to the house Pa built for Ma.

This is a photo Carrie took of Ma in her living room.

They did a nice job of duplicating the wallpaper and the look of the room.

Family photos.

The Swedish folks from Tanzania.

And a really cool stove.

Our tour guide.

Some of the furniture in this room belonged to Rose, Laura's daughter.

This nightstand belonged to Rose.

Grace's secretary.

The kitchen cupboards Laura's dad made.

Still with the original handles.

Eee-gads.

The cupboard held three shelves of dishes from Ma, Laura and Rose.

Interesting to see who had what.

One of the handles from Pa's cupboard.

Mary's raised letter bible.

Not in braille, but raised letters.

Look closely and you can see them.

Interesting

They highlighted this commentary article written by Eliza Jane Wilder and then showed it typed out

(see the paper below)

The bank building on the corner where Pa's building was.

Then I drove down to see the lakes which Laura said she and Almanzo rode the buggy around.

Lake Henry and Thompson.

Good lord they are huge!!

I wonder how big they were back then....

Sloughs I saw on the drive to the lakes.

There were quite a few.

Good-bye Ingall's Homestead.

Your trees look great.

I bet they look beautiful in the summer with leaves.

I drove south taking the scenic drive.

Came across this quilt store which had quite an entrance.

It wasn't as big as I thought it would be.

I found out it has only been a store with quilting goods for 2 years.

Prior to that the lady did longarm work.

They had a lot of nice wool and reproduction fabrics.

My kind of store.

I liked this pillow.

They also had horses and cattle.

Business must be good.

This is their house.

I decided to drive down to Ponca State Park.

The roads were crap but the hills were nice.

The roads were really crappy.

I am bored.

Taking pics to kill time.

I saw several signs denoting campsites for Lewis and Clark.

The fountain and waterfall are not turned on yet.

The view of the Missouri River and Iowa.

They had done a controlled burn in the park.

They melted this trail sign.

It was greening up nicely.

Pretty flowers.

Wild bleeding hearts.

I saw several views of the river. From up here you can see Iowa and South Dakota.

I tried to take a pic of the sparkling slug trails.

It didn't work.

They sparkled like glitter.

Fence, what fence?

I want to see what is over the edge.

But I'm too scared to get too close so I held my phone out and took this.

Then I hiked the trail back to my camp through the bright lime green hills dotted with purple and white violets and bleeding hearts. I could hear turkeys and saw several deer running away from me as I approached them.