“Wilder Homestead and Birthplace of Rose Wilder Lane”

On the low hill immediately west of this spot stood the homestead claim shanty of Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Mrs. Wilder (1867-1957) known all over the world as the author of the “Little House” books, a series of autobiographical accounts of pioneering by the Ingalls and Wilder families. Six of her books have their settings in the De Smet area. The First Four Years tells of farm life at this location from 1885-1889.

A shanty on the hilltop was the birthplace of the Wilders’ only surviving child Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968). Mrs. Lane became a well-known novelist, journalist and political essayist. Two of her 1930’s novels, Free Land and Let the Hurricane Roar describe South Dakota pioneering.

She also wrote biographies, translated books and served as a foreign correspondent. Her last reporting assignment took her to Viet Nam in 1965, when at 78 Rose Wilder Lane was America’s oldest war correspondent. Although her career included travels around the world, Mrs. Lane stated that the entire pattern of her life was formed by the immense prairie skies, the acres of waving grain and the struggling saplings of her Dakota childhood.

One and one half miles north of this spot is another quarter section of land which was the tree claim of Laura and Almanzo Wilder. Some of the original tree plantings still survive. Here the Wilders also lived during their early married life, experiencing a fire which destroyed their home, the death of an infant son and other natural disasters which were part of the daily lives of the courageous South Dakota pioneers. ‘No one,' Mrs. Wilder wrote, ‘who has not pioneered can understand the fascination and the terror of it.

Kingsbury County, SD 25 -north of De Smet 1-2 mile (2006)