Little Drought on the Prairie

Throughout the well-read Little House children's books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Ingalls family pioneered in various locations around the Plains in the 1870s and 1880s. The family faced many hardships and struggles, and as a family who largely lived off the land, they were particularly vulnerable to weather and climate extremes. The Ingalls family of Laura's childhood, as well as the Wilder family after Laura's marriage to Almanzo Wilder, faced drought in several locations and in several time periods during her childhood and early adult years, encountering some of the well-documented droughts in the Plains that shaped settlement patterns. These droughts directly contributed to decisions about family economics, food and water availability, and relocation to new areas to escape the drought conditions. This study will explore the causal relationships between drought and impacts to the Ingalls and Wilder families throughout the Little House book series, documenting the historical veracity of events as described by Laura as well as examining connections to the impacts of drought on other settlers in the Great Plains during the homesteading era.