Laura Ingalls Wilder at Burr Oak, Iowa

 For all who went to school in Elmore, Mn, you know what I am talking about here!  In 4th grade we read Laura Ingalls Wilder books as taught in reading class by our teacher, Mrs. Dick.  We were all absolutely enthralled by her writings and the fact that she was a Minnesota pioneer.  She had several homes in the area as they moved from place to place and she wrote about all of them.  One place that she wrote about and that was not published YET! was the home in Burr Oak, Iowa.  The tour guide would say Burr Oak and I always thought she was saying "Baroque" and it took me a few minutes to figure out what she was saying.  Burr Oak didn't appear on our GPS.  It was near Decatur, Iowa.  It was in the vicinity of Lanesboro and so I wanted to take the opportunity to go there.  There was a main road leading to it called Ingalls Hwy or something like that.  Another home which we didn't visit was in Walnut Grove, Minnesota.

So we found ourselves in Burr Oak.  We were told that although Laura wrote about Burr Oak experiences in their lives, this writing was not published as a part of the children's books that are now so well known and published in  40 languages.  The reason was is because this home was in a hotel and the Ingalls family lived there and Mrs. Ingalls fed the hotel patrons and they worked there at the hotel which was situated next door to a saloon.  The stories that Laura Ingalls wrote about and expressed were not suitable for children in the part written at this location because her experiences here next to the saloon were not always the best and not some that children should be reading about.  This year this book is being published for an adult audience and is now available for pre-order.  We saw a copy of that writing in her own hand-writing, which was very nice actually.

So we started the tour in the museum part which was in the old Burr Oak Savings bank shown below:

Here is a picture of the Hotel where the Ingalls family lived and worked.  The saloon is no longer there.

Below a picture as you enter:

And a few more shots of the home:

At the pump organ, Laura would "have" to sing while a regular male patron of the hotel played.  Not her favorite thing to do, but had to anyways.

This was a short tour, fun for my memories as a Laura Ingalls fan, though and I am glad I got to visit.  I would have always felt as though I had missed it considering I was so close to it!