Little House on the Prairie / Chickasaw NRA
Winter Migration Road Trip, Day 4 | Kansas to Oklahoma | Little House on the Prairie Museum | Pawhuska, OK | Camping & Hiking in Chickasaw National Recreation Area | November 2023
We woke up to a chilly morning in Southeast Kansas, but still braved the cold to go outside and enjoy our little lakefront property campsite. I was excited about the stops we had planned for this morning, because there were two places along the way that I had wanted to visit for a long time. Coincidentally, in order to get to these attractions we had to drive the exact route that Curtis had driven in May of 2013 when he was driving from AZ to IA the summer before we got married. This meant that I would get to see the route he had taken alone…and I would steal all but one of the counties he has and I don’t! (The one he has left is Dallas, TX, and he can keep it for all I care)
Our first stop was just a few miles West of where we stayed: the Little House on the Prairie Museum, the presumed site of where Laura Ingalls and her family lived from 1869-1871 and memorialized in ‘The Little House on the Prairie’. The museum is closed for the season, but you can still pay the entrance fee to walk around the grounds, read the signs, and admire the surrounding prairie landscape. The interesting thing about this land is that Pa Ingalls moved his family here in 1869 expecting it to become available for him to own within the next year, but it turned out he was wrong and they ended up moving back to Wisconsin. Since they never actually owned the land, it took historians a while to figure out where they lived. There were a few hints from the book, but Laura described the property as being in “Indian territory” which would have meant Oklahoma. However, a family Bible recorded her younger sister, Carrie, as being born in Kansas. It was only because the family lived in Kansas during the census in 1870 that we are able to definitively know that the family lived in Kansas, and then by searching plat maps and looking for last names of people Laura mentioned in the book, they were able to determine almost the exact site of where the Ingalls family lived.
Today, the only original structure that remains is the base of the well Pa dug. There is a reconstructed cabin that is open to tour when the site is open, as well as a schoolhouse and post office that were moved to this site, and a residence that was built well after the Ingalls moved. We enjoyed walking around and reading the signs, and seeing the miniature horses and donkeys. I made sure to have Curtis take a picture of me with my own little “house” (van) on the prairie with THE little house on the prairie. This is our 4th site related to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books — Almanzo Wilder‘s home in NY, Plum Creek in MN, De Smet in SD — and my fifth, counting Burr Oak, IA, which wasn’t written about.
After our time here, we entered Oklahoma on US-75, and drove across the Osage reservation. Our next stop was in Pawhuska, OK, where we walked around the downtown area to see the Pioneer Woman’s Merc and other shops in the area, all decorated for Christmas. When kids — including my niece — see Charlotte, they often mention how she looks like Charlie the Ranch dog, so obviously we had to bring her to her own “sweet shop”. Since it was too cold for ice cream, we picked up some goodies from the bakery before getting back on the road.
We didn’t have anything else planned between here and our chosen campsite for tonight, so we pressed on until we made it to Chickasaw National Recreation Area near Sulphur, OK. There was only one campground open, so we made our way there and found a spot between all the hunters and the weekend campers. That evening, we went for a walk down to the lake, and then enjoyed warm showers and the first evening that was actually comfortable enough to sit outside for dinner. Instead of the cold or dark, it was rain that eventually sent us inside for the night.
The next morning, we went for a couple of hikes before leaving the area. First, we drove to the Travertine Nature Center and did a short loop hike to see Little Niagara Falls — emphasis on the ‘little’. We learned that this park was originally the 7th national park, created to avoid the commercialization that had happened in Hot Springs, and then was very appropriately downgraded to a national recreation area when the Lake was built. Still, it was worth visiting just for the short walk and being able to say we’ve visited another national park administered site.
We wrapped up our time here with driving up to the Bromide Lookout. I was a little skeptical, but the views over Sulphur turned out to be pretty good. There were even some trees still holding onto their autumn leaves. After a short walk here, we got back on the road and continued our journey West.
