TOAST: The Corn Palace and Laura Ingalls Wilder

From: Dan Trumble
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 2:49 PM
Subject: The Corn Palace and Laura Ingalls Wilder

Let me take a moment to answer a couple of burning questions that you probably would like for me to answer:

Question #1:
Dan, has your family ever visited the famed Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota?
Oh yes, we’ve been there (although Beth stayed in the car while the rest of us looked around).

The Corn Palace is a structure where conventions, basketball games, and presumably other good stuff, can happen in the fine community of Mitchell, SD. Each year it is decorated differently using Corn. This year’s theme is the rodeo. This is not the original Corn Palace but this one has been there since 1921. The Corn Palace, in some form or another, goes back to 1892.

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Question #2:
Dan, has your family ever traveled along the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway?
Oh, yes, we’ve traveled it (at least part of it).

Near DeSmet, South Dakota, is an old homestead property of Pa Ingalls (Charles) and it has been turned into kind of a museum. Included are a couple of representative dwellings (a sod house and a regular, above ground, house), a schoolhouse, a barn, and other good stuff. It is closed for the season but they allow people to walk around and check things out and we did some of that. My, but it was cold.

Quoting from a description posted inside “Ma’s Little House”:

In the Spring of 1880, to shelter his family of six, he [Charles] built a “half-house” of 140 square feet [13 sq meters]…In 1881, he added the second half, (an additional 140 square feet…While Mary attended the Iowa School for the Blind, Pa and Laura worked hard and saved money to purchase an organ as a surprise on her arrival home. Pa built a 16 foot x 20 foot addition to make room for the pump organ…This reconstructed claim shanty was built according to the description Pa wrote on the papers he filed with the government.

We visited the Corn Palace & the old Ingall’s homestead on Friday, the 17th of November before we got to my Aunt’s house in nearby Brookings, SD. After spending time with my family on Saturday, we left to drive to Iowa on Sunday at which point we continued down the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway which eventually took us through Walnut Grove, Minnesota. There’s even a Nellie’s Café there.

Corn Palace Stuff