Laura Ingalls Wilder Park
The park is named in honor of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the "Little House" books, which were awarded a medal in 1954 as "lasting contributions to children's literature." Laura Ingalls was born in a log cabin seven miles northwest of here on February 7, 1867. In the 1860's her parents moved the family to Kansas Territory before returning to the Little House in the Big Woods a year later. By the 1870s, the Ingalls family was en route to Walnut Grove, Minnesota. They spent a year in Burr Oak, Iowa, and ultimately ended up in Dakota Territory (now part of South Dakota). At 15, Laura was teaching school and three years later married Almanzo Wilder. Laura and Almanzo lived for a while in South Dakota before settling on a farm near Mansfield, Missouri.
Mrs. Wilder began her writing career when she was sixty-five. First in the series of eight books was Little House in the Big Woods, describing her experiences here in the Pepin area. The book was an immediate success. The author was surprised at her success and told an interviewer after writing her first book, "I thought that would end it. But what do you think? Children who read it wrote to me begging for more. I was amazed because I didn't know how to write. I went to little red schoolhouses all over the West and I never was graduated from anything." Laura Ingalls Wilder died in 1957 at the age of 90.
