Hello! My name is Palmer Hittesdorf and I am the Curator here at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. I plan to post a variety of topics here in a blog style format. Thanks for reading!
February 24, 2025
One of the main goals here at the museum is to provide our guests with accurate historical information about the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Therefore, it is important to recognize that our beloved series is indeed a part of the historical fiction genre. Many of the stories and timelines told within each book have been altered to appeal to younger audiences and fit certain themes. Laura’s books evolved throughout the writing process until they eventually reached publishing, and with each revision came a new recounting of Laura’s life. Many of these edits were documented throughout correspondence with Laura’s daughter, and primary editor, Rose. Through handwritten letters, they exchanged ideas and amendments, with Rose providing editorial influence—suggesting revisions, pacing adjustments, and even specific word choices. Today, researchers and historians are able to use these letters as tools to navigate many of the questions related to Laura’s life across the American frontier. Here is one letter addressed to Rose providing examples of the many changes that were applied to “On the Banks of Plum Creek.”:
August 6, 1936
“Rose Dearest,
The central idea is that field of wheat which was going to make them rich. It took both banks of Plum Creek and three years and the wheat wasn’t raised yet, but the inference in the last chapter is that it was raised the next year, the fourth.
We can’t have the blizzard the year of the Christmas tree, for that awful winter was the beginning of the west seasons that kept the grasshoppers down and put them out. The winter was supposed, and was, so bad that no one would have gone out to a Christmas tree. It was an open winter that permitted them all to go so far as to town Christmas. The last winter was one bad storm after another as I have written it, unsafe to leave home. It caught Pa and Ma at the first. No, I think that last winter must be left as it is more or less or we spoil the effect as well as not being correct as to conditions in grasshopper times.
Cut out the dog fight.
On page 62 let the chapter end with the words “the smell of the air was different and the sky was not so sharply blue.”
Call the chapter Gathering Plums. That will gain a little space and nothing lost. At the last of Page 96 say, “Where Pa had broken the prairie sod for the wheat filled the ground lay black and wet. “Pa looked at it and said” etc.
Cut out the town party. Let the girls come out on Saturday. afternoon to play on the banks of Plum Creek. Nellie or what is her name can be snooty just the same. That will keep the action closer to the Banks of P.G.
Cut out the prairie fire and the Nelsons altogether except for what has already been said. Cut the whole chapter “Strawstack”, if you wish.
Pare going to school down as small as possible. We cut out the boys before. That will let the action stay on the creek more.
The chapter about the Christmas tree is all that is needed about that winter
I have no copy of the thing here that I can go over. If I should try to use the first scraps of scribbling I would get us all confused for I changed it so much from then.
That makes it hard for me to tell you where to cut.
But can not details be omitted so as not to duplicate the seasons.
Christmas tree for one winter, blizzards for the next, the hard, last winter.
Grasshoppers coming one summer, hatching and going away the next.
The wheat is what they are working and waiting for. The Banks of Plum Creek are the stage setting where all these things happen while waiting for the wheat.
Would it not be possible to make the chapters shorter? Couldn’t Pa’s coming home and the Christmas tree make one chapter?
Couldn’t Pa’s boots be in the “church” chapter? I mean shorten both and combine them in one.
How would it be to cut out the “Ox on the Roof”? Using the beginning of that chapter as far as “Pete and Bright were so big they would scare anybody”, cut there and pick up the next chapter carrying it on to page 62 ending it as I said with the words “the sky not so sharply blue.
This would make one chapter of “Ox on the Roof” and “Company” and save a lot of space to be used on the last winter.
I do believe it would be an improvement.
Will all this not give you room enough? Awfully sorry it is such a mess.
The idea is that On the B. of P.C. was safe and then look what happened. Laura preferred wolves—and plenty as soon as one crop could be raised –enter the grasshoppers. Prosperity was only just around the corner, just till that crop of wheat was raised. The idea is well advanced when Pa breaks the ground.
Wish you needn’t bother with it.
The story of course is in all these happenings while trying for the wheat and safety”
February 17, 2025
Step back in time with us to 1909, when a fierce blizzard blanketed Walnut Grove, and swallowed the 
Chicago & Northwestern Railroad in its icy grip. These photos capture the power of nature and the resilience of the community to reopen the rail lines. Attached to the locomotives were large rotary blades which were effective in clearing paths blocked by snow along the rails.
With hard work also came time for recreation. The young men of Walnut Grove are also pictured taking advantage of the large 
snow drifts by jumping from the train cars. Just don’t let Mom see you doing it!
