City: Mansfield, MO

Category: Tours & Attractions

Telephone: (417) 924-3626

Address: 3068 MO A

Description: Wilder’s Little House books are classics of children’s literature, and because of the TV series (still aired in Europe and Japan) you’re likely to see a bus of Japanese tourists at this site. Laura lived most of her life on the farm she named Rocky Top. She moved to the Ozarks in 1894 but never wrote a Little House in the Ozarks. When she settled down, she stayed. The home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1957, the year that Laura died at age ninety. She and her husband, Almanzo, and daughter, Rose, are all buried in the Mansfield Cemetery. You can see the writing desk where she penned her Little House books and some of her handwritten manuscripts. You may feel a bit like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians because Almanzo custom-built counters and much of the furniture to accommodate the diminutive 4-foot, 11-inch Laura. Next door is the Laura Ingalls Wilder–Rose Wilder Lane Museum, which has Laura’s earliest needlepoint sampler, Pa’s famous fiddle, collections of household and farm implements, and memorabilia from Rose, a celebrated author in her own right. You’ll also like the Little House Bookstore, where you can purchase books in the Little House series, as well as books by Rose, dolls, posters, T-shirts, puzzles, and games. If you come in late August, you might want to take in the community production of Little House Memories at the Mansfield City Park in the evening. Call for information about times. The house and museum are usually open daily during the season, March 1 to October 31. During November the museum and house are closed, but during December there is a special Christmas open house. Call for dates. Tickets to the house and museum are $3 for those ages 6 to 18, $5 for seniors, and $6 for everybody else except kids younger than 6, who get in free. Signs will direct you to the home and museum, which is only a mile east of the Mansfield town square on MO A.