Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum

I spent an enjoyable hour here one morning. I will give the museum foundation (or whoever runs this place) points for keeping Rocky Ridge Farm understated without a lot of hoopla and commercialization. The tour through the house was done well, and the main house is certainly worth seeing without having to know it was the home of not just one but two great writers (Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Rose Wilder Lane, her daughter). The house is a marvel of woodworking done by Almanzo Wilder. It is small but so well designed. But you can’t really touch anything, unlike the Levi Coffin house in Fountain City, Indiana (see my review). No pictures. Someone once told me there were two kinds of librarians. Those who WANT you to touch books and read, and those who really hate people and DON’T WANT anyone even looking at their precious collection. The folks running this foundation are the latter type. The feeling you get is stand offish. The museum is a big disappointment. I know they are building a new museum next door but unless their philosophy and vision changes I don’t know how adding more artifacts and objects on display is going to help. The interpretation of the fiddles, dishes, typewriters, etc. is on par with an adequate county historical society. One would expect better from a foundation charging $ 10 per adult to visit. Things are labelled with yellowing paper strips, and as a whole there is no cohesive or detailed sense of the people as human beings, or writers, or artists, or woodworkers, or pioneers. The morals police have been at work here. No mention of Rose’s divorce, no mention of her relationship with her parents and her frequent times to live together with them. It’s pretty much what you would get from a TV biography – pretty much a valentine. Which makes the place a lot less interesting. It’s strange, as the author of the «Little House» series never wrote in a way that was sentimental. She didn’t hide stuff.

Our family visited the Ingalls Homestead in De Smet, SD last year and became charged with the spirit to visit more LIW heritage. So needless to say this was an essential visit.
What you have here is a small museum of relics from the family, a short video, and the potential to tour the two houses that Laura and Almanzo lived in. I’ll break it down here:
— Museum: a roughly 20×30 room, probably 70% devoted to Laura and the rest to her daughter Rose Wilder Lane. You can see family heirlooms (most notably Pa’s fiddle), manuscripts, foreign editions, and photos. Timing-​wise, I think 30 minutes would give you plenty of time to take it in.
— the original house: this is next to the museum. When it’s your time to tour the house, you’ll watch a small orientation video. It’s a charming house, and your tour of it will take about 20 – 30 minutes — if you’re lucky your tour will happen at the top of the hour, so you can hear the chimes from the old clock Almanzo gave Laura. No photos allowed inside, but there’s a nice gift shop that has some postcards, all the Little House books you’d desire, and t-​shirts.
— The new house: you’ll need to drive a mile or two to get here (directions on your ticket). Tours are timed, so check ahead if you can. I’d imagine if you miss the tour, it won’t kill you — you could still drive up to the cute Sears & Roebuck house and check out the exterior and the interior isn’t as decorated as the other house — but of course it’s great to go inside if you can. We had a huge group, so the docent gave us introductory words and then we queued to walk through the house unaccompanied. Your talk will be about 5 – 10 minutes, and the walk shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.
— The graves: this is also going to be a few minutes’ drive, and again you will have directions on your ticket. As you approach the cemetery there will be clear signage to point out the graves for Laura, Almanzo, and Rose. If you’re making the pilgrimage to Mansfield, you owe it to yourself and the LIW legacy to visit the shrine.
Understand that none of this (outside of the museum) pertains heavily on Little House-​specific stuff — that was in Laura’s past (except for the fact she wrote the books here). It’s not filled with kids’ activities, either. As such, if you’re doing the LIW sites with kids it might be good to visit the Little House On The Prairie site in Kansas before you come here, to allow an appreciation of the author’s work before visiting the author’s home. Not that you have to. But regardless, a LIW fan won’t be disappointed — it’d be impossible!

I visited the home because I grew up reading the Little House books and really enjoyed them as a kid. Laura’s house was really an amazing place to be, and I especially loved standing in the exact spot she wrote all the books that I love so much. It was a really special moment for me.
The museum was very interesting and allows its patrons to learn more about Laura and her family. I really enjoyed the section on her daughter Rose Wilder Lane; a really fascinating and amazing woman I can’t wait to learn more about. It may not have the conveniences or money behind it that many modern museums have, but I felt the passion and excitement held by the staff more than made up for this. It at least did in my book :).
Laura and Almanzo’s house was adorable, and they were truly great and amazing people, so I loved learning about them. The tour guide did a great job painting a picture of what life was really like for them. We also visited her second home, and again enjoyed the passion the tour guide possessed.
With my positive review, I would not really recommend a visit for someone who doesn’t really love the little house books.
Also, I recommend visiting during the annual fall festival. At this time, famous people connected with the story visit. A few of the locals I spoke with on my visit told me that it was rumored that Melissa Gilbert would attend this year. Also at the festival, a local musician plays Pa’s fiddle. This is definitely the time to travel to see the museum.

For those of us that are fans of Little House, the Ingalls, and Wilder’s this is an awesome place to be. Driving here you may feel like you are out in the middle of nowhere, but once you pull up it is a beautiful scenery of rolling hills and trees with the Wilder’s home nestled into the property. The tour is inexpensive. As you walk through the house you almost get a sense of Laura and Almonzo being there. You get to see many things from their families. There are Mary’s glasses, Pa’s fiddle, Laura’s writings, and much, much more. I was in awe, but of course I am a huge fan of the family and of those times.

I was driving cross-​country and went about four hours out of my way to visit Rocky Ridge Farm from the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Totally worth it! For $ 10 you get tours of both houses: the original farmhouse that Laura and Almanzo built in the books, and the 1930s state of the art farmhouse that Rose had built for her parents (where they lived for a few years and then promptly moved back to their other house while she was traveling for work!). You also get an introductory film and access to the museum, which includes an extremely extensive display of items from the books, from Laura and Mary’s school slates to Pa’s fiddle. For a Little House lover it is pretty incredible.
The guides were friendly and knowledgeable. The history of the house building process, architecture, and interior design is fascinating. The electricity and plumbing installations and improvements over the 60 or so years that the Wilders lived there are also really interesting to learn about, particularly things invented by Almanzo to make Laura’s life easier, such as a water pump to the stove. Such innovative people!
Heads up, there is no photography allowed in the houses or museum, but they sell postcards of most artifacts and interiors in the gift shop. While you’re there, it is also worth it to stop at the Wilder graves in the nearby Mansfield cemetery.

I took my mom to see Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum because we had both read all of The Little House on the Prairie books and loved them all! It was very educational and you will see items that are referred to in her books. Her husband Alonzo was such a talented man in his own right and you can easily see it in what he built in the house to make things easier for her. What an experience! Highly recommended!

I drove back and forth from Jersey City, NJ to Mansfield, MO by way of Bloomington, Indiana in 6 days, including two days in Bloomington. This was during the legendary Cicada Brood XVII invasion of 2004. I had a Mini Cooper S, a burning desire to see Laura’s home with Almanzo and Rose for so many years, under a week, and nothing to stop me. I went. It was worth twenty hours in the car, each way, and having every inch of my little car pounded by the splatting bodies of large, juicy cicadas for literally hundreds of miles at 75 miles per hour. The moment I got there, I felt like I had been transported to another world. Mansfield in May is as close to heaven as I think I can get on this earth. The Ozarks are so high and the sky is so huge you feel like it is under you. Viewing the famous relics of Laura’s youth, the most important of which is Pa’s fiddle, made me cry. The lovely docents who give the tours were so moved by my dedication and love for all things Little House that they opened up early the following morning to give me a tour privately. No photographs are permitted in the museum, abutting Laura’s home on Rocky Ridge Farm, where she wrote all her «Little House» books and raised her daughter Rose, but I managed to take a number of others, which I will share with you here.
Touring the home is amazing, if you have read any of Laura’s other writings. Writing for the Missouri Ruralist as Mrs. A.J. Wilder, she writes in detail of moving a spring, building this home, finding stones for the fireplace, of Almanzo’s amazing work building her a kitchen, etcetera. To see cabinets he fitted, to see the steps he hammered, to see the chairs where they sat first by lamplight and then by electricity,
is nothing short of amazing. To see this physical achievement of a woman who was born and raised on the prairie in covered wagons, sod houses and log shanties, is incredibly moving.
If you grew up with these books and the television show, as I did, this is a wonderful pilgrimage. It is utterly out of the way, but is only approximately 40 miles from Springfield, and not too far from Branson, so it is not inconceiveable that you could find yourself here, in tiny Mansfield, population 850. I stayed in neighboring Ava at a Days Inn or something, about five miles down the road. Food options in Mansfield are extremely limited, with something called the Laura Ingalls buffet being marginally edible, and the Tastee-​Freez offering fried pickles.
Surrounding areas include a large Amish population, far more isolated and far less beset by tourists than Lancaster County, PA, so if you have any interest along those lines, here is another place to see a rare lifestyle being lived. There is an excellent BBQ place not far away too, off the interstate, and I encourage you to try it.
All kidding aside, coming here was one of the most exciting and moving things I have ever done. I am thrilled I did it. I can’t wait to come back.