Freedom's Frontier

Step into a replica of the Ingalls’ cabin and step back to 1870, when the Osage were being moved off southeast Kansas’s prairie for white settlement.

It is just a simple one room cabin on the prairie. But the prairie with it’s open skies, seemingly endless horizon and tall grasses waving in the Kansas wind attracted homesteaders from all over the world. In 1869 a young family from the woods of Wisconsin arrived to settle. When Charles P. Ingalls, his wife Caroline Lake Quiner Ingalls and their daughters Mary, Laura and Carrie camped on the Kansas prairie little did they know it would change their lives and children’s literature forever.

Stand in the replica one room cabin and imagine the darkness of night and the stillness of the prairie disturbed only by the sounds of wolves howling.

Look out the cabin’s small windows and picture drifts of snow so high that nothing around can be seen.

Imagine the smell of a warm crackling fire and the aroma of Ma’s cooking.

Look at Pa’s hand dug well and imagine the hardships of daily life on the prairie.

Stand in an untilled hay meadow carpeted with prairie flowers and imagine what young Laura saw so many years ago.