#4346 Go to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Pepin

The second and third stops on the Inner Elementary Teacher/History Geek Road Trip were the Laura Ingalls Wilder Cabin and Museum.  Both of these made complete sense after visiting Caddie Woodlawn's Cabin since both Laura and Caddie lived in Western Wisconsin in the mid 1800's.

After a topsy-turvy drive on a few country roads from Caddie's cabin, I arrived at the Ingall's cabin near Stockholm.

Again it was a modest little homestead. This one was a modern reconstruction of their cabin on their original land. Imagine Pa, Ma, Laura, and her 2 sisters lived in this cabin in the Big Woods. The woods are no longer there but if you follow Hwy CC in Pepin County from the Cabin to Pepin you probably are on the same wagon trail Laura and her family took to get to "town". 

The first thing I did when I went into the cabin was to check for Pa's Gun rack. Pa hung his loaded gun over the door of the cabin (gasp..with young children in the house. Laura and her sister even helped their Pa make bullets and load the gun).  No hooks for the gun. I guess they missed that detail when reconstructing the cabin.

No hooks for Pa's gun

After checking out the cabin, I headed into Pepin to check out the actual museum. I was thoroughly disappointed. The 2 main room, plus 2 side rooms museum was not worth the $5 admission price. It probably took me 10 minutes to go through the museum. I am not sure what I was expecting but I thought they would have been more actual artifacts from the Ingalls family. There were a lot of period items donated by other people that the Ingalls may have had similar items. It did show the kinds of tools and household items Laura would have had while growing up. There were a couple items of interest if you paid attention to the books... Laura's red mittens, her doll that she received for Christmas, Pa's fiddle.

One side room was a set up as a kitchen and the other was set up as a school. The kitchen was behind the room that had all the period tools. The school was set up on the other side of the museum behind the transportation room. In the transportation room, kids could be a river boat captain in a model river boat. I personally liked the covered wagon. It was probably the same kind of wagon that Laura would have traveled in from The Little House in the Big Woods to the Little House on the Prairie. The schoolroom was your typical one room school house display. 

 Again I think I had too high of expectations and was disappointed but anyone that has read the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder should check out both her cabin and the museum. Even though I wasn't impressed I think kids who read the books for the first time, will be able to visualize the book better. It's not every day you can see a book come to life and see exactly where and how the main character lived. And for that reason alone, it's worth the trip (and the admission cost).