On To De Smet (part two)

Up not too early to get back on the highway to De Smet, South Dakota. The day started out fairly windy, but not too bad for driving. After a few hours of driving we came up on a pretty nice rest area right on the Missouri River. There is a beautiful metal sculpture of a Lakota woman to greet everyone. Reid and I walked around the rest area for about fifteen minutes before getting on the road again.

It didn’t take us long before we got to De Smet. Wow! We’re finally here! I thought. I was giddy with excitement at just seeing the city limit sign! We drove through town (which hasn’t grown very much since Laura Ingalls lived there) and found the street for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society. We pulled up and my heart was beating fast with anticipation. We were finally here! This has been a Bucket List item of mine ever since I found out you could visit this place.

The Memorial Society is in this lovely house at the end of Olivet Street. We walked in and were greeted by a nice receptionist and tour guide. We paid for our tour which started at 2 PM. It was almost 1:30, so we went to find a place to eat. We found a Subway/Dairy Queen and ate quickly to make it back just in time for the tour.

First stop was the Surveyor’s House which the Ingalls family lived in that first winter in De Smet. By our standards it was a small house, but by Laura’s standards it was, in her words, a mansion with five rooms. The guide told us the story of how the Ingalls family lived there (nothing really new that wasn’t in the books), and we got to look around and take pictures. There is an added-on room on the back of the house where you could still see the original wood siding and nails. I stood in that house and tried to imagine how Laura might have seen it for the first time. The house was small, but then, so was Laura. At 4 feet 11 inches, she really was a “half-pint of sweet cider half drunk up.”

Next stop was the school house Laura and Carrie attended. It had gone through many changes, at one time it was a private residence. Where the walls had been put up to make bedrooms and then taken down, you could see some of the original flooring. A wood stove stood in the middle of the room, original walls and blackboard were visible (behind a clear glass barrier). Samples of twisted hay from The Long Winter and a jar of wheat, showing how much had to be ground up to make one loaf of bread during that hard time were also on display.

Next was the Brewster School that Laura taught for her first teaching job at age 15 years old. The school was smaller than most modern living rooms, but she only had eight students. It was dark, with only a door and one window.

The next part of the tour took us in our cars to 3rd Street, where Pa Ingalls’ final house was. It was a more “modern” house, with a huge kitchen and about three bedrooms.

After going back to the gift shop and buying a few things, Reid and I drove out to where the Ingalls homestead had been. There were several buildings to visit, so we borrowed a Cushman cart to drive to them. There was a replica of the dugout the Ingalls family lived in while in Minnesota. It was just how I imagined it through Laura’s description of it. There was a replica of the claim shanty they family lived in. Talk about small! You could start on one side, take five steps, and be across the room, and that was the entire house! In another building was a covered wagon. Those are not very big, either. Families really had to play Tetris before it was a thing to get all their belongings inside.