Show 4 C2 — The Herald Journal Logan Utah Wednesday March 27 2002 A By Valerie Schremp St Louis ' ' had no real explanation for this When friends asked where I went on summer vacation last year I slouched a bit and felt a little rieidy ' “I went to all the ‘Little House on ' I mumbled the Prairie’ startled Some They looked almost pleasantly surprised “There really are such places?" they'd ask “Is it really like the TV show?" 1 ses” “Did you go wigon?" ina covered I explained that these places actually exist — in Iowa Wisconsin Minnesota South Dakota Kansas and even in Missouri I never really watched the show but I did read the “Little House" books which Wilder wrote based on her life as a pioneer girl Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family moved throughout the upper Midwest during the 1870s and “Little 1880s Wilder's eight-voluHouse" series written in the 1930s and 1940s brought her worldwide fame and inspires pioneer daydream-er- s today Case in point: When I wrapped up my tour with a stop at Laura’s grave in Mansfield Mo somebody before me tad placed two flowers — and two percils — at her headstone “The Big Woods” where Laura was’ bom and where she began the settings for her stories was near Pepin Wisi The real “Little House on the Prairie" where the Ingalls family first settled was near Inde- pendcncc Kan The family lived in a dugout home in “On the Banks of Plum Creek" near Walnut Grove Minn Laura’s Little Town on the Prairie” was DeSmet where Laura met and married Almanzo Wilder Two years of Laura's girlhood were left out of her autobiographical sto- ties a period when the family operated a frontier hotel at Burr Oak Iowa It took a 2300-mi- le journey to through loop the stages in Laura's life In my cov- ' ered wagon of a Ford Escort 1 drove north to Iowa and Wisconsin west through Minnesota and South Dakota south through Kansas and then northeast through Missouri and back to St Louis I made “Laura stops" ' along the way in each state : - ’ : - has the Masters Hotel which in its day would have as many as 200 covered wagons stopped there for the night The Ingalls family moved to Burr Oak in 1876 after a series of ruined crops on the Minnesota prairie The Steadmans friends of the ' Ingalls from their church in Minnesota asked Ma and Pa to be their partners in a hotel they had bought On the way there the Ingalls’ only son a baby not quite a year old got sick and died and the family buried him in a small grave near South Troy Minn In 1877 Grace Ingalls was bom in Burr Oak The brick house is not there but the hotel remains and it is the only childhood residence of Laura that remains on its original site ' After ah overnight stay I took off west across Minnesota for Walnut Grove about 40 inMin-neapol- is Utah State University will host the 2 1 st All-UtJapanese Speech Contest on March 30 The event sponsored by I Ik Department of Languages and Philosophy of the College of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences is slated to take place at 1 pm in Old Main room 225 Most of the state's institu- tions of higher education including USU University of Utah BYU Weber State Utah Valley State College ah Vision Salr Lake Community College and Snow College offer ' Japanese language courses feach year students from each of these institutions gather together to compete at two levels Advanced level contestants in the annual event must deliver an original speech in Japanese on one of two topics This year’s topics are “ Salt take City Winter Olympic Games” and “What does it mean to be bilingual?? Atsuko Neely lecturer in" 2020 Save Our Prevent Blindness Utah 661 South 200 East life-siz- miles east of the South Dakota state line Walnut Grove has signs marking the site of the schoolhouse Laura attended and the church where Pa’s bell now hang in a belfry As told in “On the Banks of Plum Creek” Pa donated money to the church’s bell fund money lie intended to spend 'on a pair of badly needed boots ’’ A Laura Ingalls Wilder museum offers more Laura lore including her sewihg basket and crochet thread and a pair of pantyhose belonging to Alison Amgrim who played Laura’s nemesis Nellie Oleson in the “Little House” television series Amgrim visited Walnut Grove in 1992 and wore the pantyhose during a romp in nearby Plum Creek The Ingalls family arrived iri May 1874 when Laura was 7 and settled two miles north of Walnut Grove in a dugout home on the banks of the creek and later in a nearby farmhouse The sites are now situated on the Gordon family farm and the family uses the honor system asking tourists to leave $3 in a metal mailbox before they crunch (town a grav- el road to the creek Thousands of wildflowers still grow in fields nearby and clear water flows ova round rocks in the creek The dugout with its whitewashed walls and stovepipe running roof no up through a longer exists but what’s left behind of the most is perhaps one time Along the creek there’s a noticeable depression in the grass and in the grass stands a wooden sign “The Charies Ingalls family’s dugout home was located here in the 1870s” it says “This depression is all that remains since the roof caved in years ago The prairie grasses and flowers here grow much as they did in Laura’s time and the spring still flows nearby ’’ Just overlOO miles west of Wal-nut Grove lies DeSmet SD Laura was 12 when she traveled west with her family for the last time and arrived at Silver Lake After Pa Ingalls finished a season working fix the railroad the family stayed during the winter of 1879 in the Surveyor’s House which has been restored and moved tp the town of DeSmet' Tourists who walk through it can see a chest of drawers made by Pa In' “Little Town on die Prairie’’ Laura mentions finding ha Christmas gift a copy of Tennyson’s poems hidden in the bottom drawer Tours also can visit the home Pa built in 1887 where Pa Ma and Mary lived until they died As at Walnut Grove the most captivating Laura sites lie just outside of town To the east is the site of anoth- - hay-and-re- ed ffi utaique annual event on a rotating basis It serves as a TIE mm- competitive showcase for stu- dents in all of the Japanese language programs in the state” fSbi'k- Support fix this year’s event comes from the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation the Check-etts Family Foundation JP Trading Inc and Seiko Instruments Inc of BYU in 1980 IBIIIIMI Unforgettable! Japanese educators in die state have continued to host this ' - wwwusetsqwestnet-pieventblindne- ss Utah 84111 MOVIESiS 2450 North Main GREAT SOUND GREAT SEATS " GREAT PICTURE Ice ' Agere 435710925545120)200 STONE pG EJ re MtaHBwilUt 200 945Sc4SllX Baton Count Of Monte Cristo rc--i 44) 15 950 545205 The Time Machine i 425 705 935545 2Q5 TOO Afa hares or ifis DbbbwV Friday April 5f 2002 7:30 pm Answers to Globetrotters Crossword Puzzle Dee Glen Smith ro-'u- were we m— jonaori m 515 : 1 1 ' Wl OO 60 Omar Skle of Heaton re 1 MS 4:40 NMain MOVIE HOTLINE 75: IP74LINP?4 I A Beautiful Mind 700 Showtime 4:30 700' OF THE RINGS HtarronBiiKsoranKSiftcm nOr MoaasiMhi— BUCK HAWK DOWN prsx Si in 1 Pili841lW 1W9SWIW 1 luHlimiiloJ ' V I— A—WB 111 MWH !( ’ ' jn a ykf'T' w JSSNi4W— SVI ! Sc TO NEVDOAND MU'iHMiaUM WIMV 1' &VJB ROY WOW in tiiiink Help FlBht Illiteracy! XSun 200 300 North Mom Bnhind SMal ResidenlEvflji 4J0 7M9M 5 4 Sun 205 HOBEIHDIlBfi i I I I Basra $3X10 on a ' fiill pri tidt wid tfa m Price itoito coupo Md SIJO ' yab4oMMdlTfcHp4ijDOTNcwWk Pdwiw ' " ptpjnu ' Tui fto pwvida loed 1 Wrlin vid far aw htSat rfamci ForowiafanMtioaaboiNIE' coMMtLaiitSM7SU121 ! 1 fV — vmivJiartiiagloMiBttMXNi OOOOQOOOOGO " MATMSSAMDAYA1HUISMYI4 MDMGHT at rossTOBggg Sol & Sun 2:10 ' A WALK TO REMEMBERS n soomb eJUUtH Onsalenow at Itah State University outlets ' Charge by phone ' VI 1 Sororky BaysH i fu lCACHEiVALLEYt3l mb iMMwiaaoaad Spectrum Utah State University w a! 4Si:u 4p4ny iim -- RETURN -I fb-i- 200 — O£0 asnrewarare SNOW DOGS sDr Sun JfP — 40 Depend 40 Nghb OCEANS 0708 MO I — mSWWiMMM mwfclApWMlM ' 415545215 2297 - Am Sue— P Wed £55 7:00 Thun 1:00 £55 700 Laura and Almanzo settled in Mansfield Mo on Rocky Ridge Farm and Laura wrote for various farm magazine and became famous after she published her first “Little House” book in 1932 Laura penned all the manuscripts fix her books on orange note tablets from the Spring- field Grocer Co — copies of the books as well as replicas of the notebooks are sold in the gift shop The museum next to the home contains probably more Ingalls artifacts than any of the other sites ' including Laura and Mary’s school slates from their schoolhouse days on Plum Creek the lace Laura received as a wedding gift from her friend Ida Brown and of course Pa’s fiddle Laura’s home is as she left it — you can 'see Laura’s favorite rocker the fireplace mantle that Almanzo fashioned from three stone slabs found on the property and the calendar in the kitchen which is still flipped to February 1957 — the month Laura died at age 90 Past the town center where a bust of Laura in a city park watches over the main street Laura Almanzo and their daughter Rose Wilder Lane are buried in die tiny Mansfield Cemetery ' pHMn pp Bmh $300 CHILDREN $200 Criche Valin' Luxury! Discount ADULTS HARRY POTTER AND THE ng reminders of Laura’s A Dollar Wall SpentBlindness you can give the pit of Salt Lake City UTAH 57 5230 72 Watabe Sight With your $1 donation to Prevent SORCERERS Scripps Howard photo The Ingalls family lived in and helped operate the Masters Hotel in Burr Oak Iowa for two years The hotel was opened as a historic site in 1 976 A local woman made e dolls of each member of the Ingalls family the dolls now sit in the parlor Japanese language and organizer of this year’s event points but that this is one of the longest running contests' of this kind in the nation “Twenty-on- e years ago Utah was a pioneer in recognizing the importance of pro' viding an enriching environment for Japanese language education” Neely said “First hosted by Dr Masakazu five-minu- te The drive south from South Dakota through Nebraska seemed like a long and boring day to me But it took more than six weeks for Laura and Almanzo to follow a similar route from DeSmet to Mansfield Mo several years after they married After I stopped to visit my sister and her family in Wichit I contin- ued to Independence Kan and revisited Laura’s childhood again to see the site of the real “Little House on the Prairie” The Ingalls family lived there between stays in the Big Woods of Wisconsin and a reconstructed log home marks the site of their Kansas stay - A stop at Spring Valley Minn about 40 miles from Butt Oak came as an afterthought It’s not well- advertised evert in enthusiasts’ circles because the “Little House” Connection is mostly that of Almanzo' Wilder whom Laura married The Wilders were members of the town’s Methodist Church which was built in 1876 and now houses two floors of exhibits including a Wilder photo display and a delightful museum A volunteer at the museum gave me a tour showing me a wooden fire wagon from 1874 artifacts from hometowner Richard Sears the department store founder and van- ous antique cameras handicrafts and barbershop tools the town's elders left to the museum ' About 83 miles northeast of ' Spring Valley is Pepin Wis a tiny town that thrives on its Ingalls connections Lake Pepin is actually a three-mil-e widening of the Mississippi River and it’s now a popular boating and fishing spot I stayed at the Pepin Inn where a picture of Kevin Hagen the man who played Doc Baker in the “Little House” television series hangs in the8ihall lobby Apparently Hagen ' slept there during a festival a few years ago praMs er Ingalls homestead As Laura recalled in ‘On the Shores of Silver Lake” Pa planted five cottonwood trees around the house one for each member of the family The Ingalls house no longer stands there but the trees do and they're so big you can’t even think about reaching your arms around them hosts Japanese speech contest USU - Itociios®© ©pa Burr Oak Iowa is a tiny hamlet just south of the Minnesota border It - Post-Dispat- : to lotifill® piOjgiroinraajg© 'V V 0TMjMflfanCI— ip— ' 1 Lifc 4 1 468 & ’i I |