50 Fun Facts About Little House on the Prairie

In the TV series, the Ingalls farm sits on the banks of which stream near Walnut Grove?

The real town has a population of about 750 and hosts the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum; the family's dugout was on the banks of Plum Creek.

Who played Charles Ingalls, the family patriarch known as Pa?

Michael Landon agreed to direct the pilot only on condition that he could also play Charles Ingalls, and went on to write, direct and executive-produce much of the series.

Which actress played Laura Ingalls, beating out more than 500 child actresses for the part?

Melissa Gilbert was nine when cast as Laura Ingalls, chosen from more than 500 child actresses; she stayed through the show's final season and later wrote the memoir Prairie Tale.

What nickname did the star and producer give the young actress playing Laura on set?

"Half Pint" was the star's on-set name for the girl playing Laura, echoing Pa's pet name for her in the books; Melissa Sue Anderson, who played Mary, answered to "Missy."

On which network did the series air from 1974 to 1983?

NBC aired the series for its entire 1974-83 run; the network was its star's television home for 30 straight years, from his first hit western in 1959 until 1989.

Why was the role of little Carrie Ingalls played by twins?

Hollywood work rules limited how long small children could be on set, so twins Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush split the role of Carrie, the same reason so many TV toddlers are played by twins.

What happens to Mary Ingalls at the end of season four?

She goes blind in the two-part season-four finale, her sight lost to the aftereffects of scarlet fever; the family then sends her to a school for the blind in Iowa.

Which orphan boy do the Ingalls adopt after meeting him in the town of Winoka?

Matthew Labyorteaux's Albert stayed with the family after they returned from Dakota to Walnut Grove.

Which family owns the mercantile in Walnut Grove?

The Olesons ran Oleson's Mercantile: Nels was stern and decent, Harriet doting and snobbish, and daughter Nellie became one of television's great villains.

Who played Nellie Oleson?

Alison Arngrim played Nellie from the first season and titled her 2010 memoir Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated.

In Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, Nellie Oleson was a composite of how many real girls?

Three real girls, Nellie Owens, Genevieve Masters and Stella Gilbert, were rolled into the one blonde tormentor Wilder named Nellie Oleson.

Whom does Nellie eventually marry on the show?

Percival Dalton, played by Steve Tracy, was hired to teach Nellie to cook and run her restaurant; his patience mellowed her, and the couple had twins.

Which character arrives in season six as Walnut Grove's new schoolteacher?

Eliza Jane Wilder, played by Lucy Lee Flippin, takes over the Walnut Grove school in the season-six premiere, Back to School, where a teenage Laura is among her pupils.

After Pa's actor left following season eight, what was the series renamed?

Little House: A New Beginning was the title of the ninth and final season, after Charles and Caroline had moved the family to Burr Oak, Iowa, leaving Laura and her husband at the centre of the stories.

How does the 1984 finale movie The Last Farewell end?

The townspeople blow up their own buildings rather than surrender Walnut Grove to a land baron, and the dynamiting was real: the lease required the sets to be cleared from the land.

Where were the exteriors of Walnut Grove and the Ingalls farm actually filmed?

Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley, California held the Walnut Grove and Ingalls farm sets for all nine seasons; Old Tucson Studios in Arizona stood in for bigger towns such as Mankato.

Who played Dr. Hiram Baker, Walnut Grove's physician?

Kevin Hagen played Dr. Hiram Baker for all nine seasons, one of the few cast members on hand from the first season to the last.

Which earlier Western made the actor who played Pa a star, as Little Joe Cartwright?

Bonanza ran for 14 seasons from 1959 to 1973, and Little Joe Cartwright, the youngest Cartwright son, made its future Pa a household name before he moved to the prairie.

How many colour episodes of the series were produced?

204 episodes were produced over nine seasons between 1974 and 1983, all in colour, not counting the pilot movie or the later follow-up television movies.

The pilot movie, first aired March 30, 1974, was based on which of Wilder's books?

The pilot adapted Little House on the Prairie, the third book, the story of the family's year in Indian Territory; the series proper then moved the Ingalls north to Minnesota.

Which producer acquired the Little House rights and hired Landon, only to leave in 1974 after clashing with him?

NBC backed Landon, and Friendly ended up a silent partner with a credit on every episode.

Pa's actor went on to star in which series about an angel on probation, from 1984 to 1989?

Highway to Heaven cast its creator as Jonathan Smith, an angel on probation, with Victor French as his partner Mark Gordon; the pair had worked together as Charles and Mr. Edwards.

The star of the show died in 1991, at age 54, of what illness?

Pancreatic cancer, diagnosed in April 1991 after it had spread to his liver, killed him on July 1 that year at his Malibu ranch; he had discussed the diagnosis on The Tonight Show in May.

Melissa Sue Anderson got a 1978 Emmy nomination as Mary and won the next year for what?

An ABC Afterschool Special, Which Mother Is Mine?, earned Anderson a 1979 Daytime Emmy for children's programming; her 1978 nomination was a Primetime Emmy for playing Mary.

Which of Wilder's books was published first, in 1932?

In the Big Woods, published in 1932 when Wilder was 65, opens the series with the family's log cabin in the Wisconsin forest and the butchering, sugaring and storytelling of a pioneer year.

The 1933 book Farmer Boy is about the boyhood of which character?

Almanzo Wilder, Laura's future husband, is the farmer boy; the book follows a year on his family's farm near Malone, New York, beginning just before his ninth birthday.

The novel Little House on the Prairie is set in which state, where the family squatted on Osage land?

Kansas, near modern Independence, is where Pa built the cabin on the Osage Diminished Reserve; the family had no legal right to be there and left after about a year.

What breed of dog was Jack, the family pet in the early books?

A brindle Bulldog, Jack trotted under the covered wagon on every move in the early books; his death at the start of By the Shores of Silver Lake is one of the series' saddest moments.

How many of the Little House books were Newbery Honor Books?

Five of the books were Newbery Honor Books: every volume published from 1937 to 1943 was named one, though none won the medal outright.

Whose illustrations replaced the originals when the books were reissued in a uniform edition in 1953?

Garth Williams, who also drew Charlotte's Web, visited Wilder at her Missouri farm in 1947 and toured the real Ingalls sites before illustrating the 1953 edition.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in 1867 near which Wisconsin village?

Pepin, on the Mississippi's Lake Pepin, lay seven miles south of the log cabin where she was born on February 7, 1867; a replica cabin marks the site today.

Where did Laura marry, in the town where her parents and sister Mary lived out their lives?

De Smet, South Dakota, where Pa filed his homestead claim in 1880, was where Laura married on August 25, 1885; her parents and Mary are buried in the town cemetery.

What nicknames did Laura and Almanzo use for each other?

Manly and Bess were their pet names: she shortened Almanzo to Manly, and he called her Bess, from her middle name Elizabeth, because his sister was also a Laura.

Laura and Almanzo eventually settled on Rocky Ridge Farm near which Missouri town?

Mansfield, in the Missouri Ozarks, was where they bought Rocky Ridge Farm in 1894 and built it up with poultry, dairy and an apple orchard after wheat had failed them in Dakota.

Who was the driving force behind Laura writing and publishing her first book?

Her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, already a successful author and journalist, pushed her mother to write the memoir Pioneer Girl and then edited the manuscripts closely, and often rockily, across the whole series.

Before the novels, Wilder spent more than a decade as a columnist for which publication?

The Missouri Ruralist printed her first article in February 1911, and she went on to write a regular column for the farm paper until 1924, under the byline Mrs. A. J. Wilder.

How old was Laura Ingalls Wilder when she died in 1957?

90: born February 7, 1867, she died at home on February 10, 1957, just after her birthday, having survived her husband by a little more than seven years.

Why did the American Library Association rename the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal in 2018?

Language in her books seen as racially biased, especially toward Native Americans, prompted the 2018 change; the prize became the Children's Literature Legacy Award, with Wilder its first recipient in 1954.

Which book, sixth in the series, spans the shortest stretch of time of any volume?

The Long Winter follows the Hard Winter of 1880-81, when blizzards from October to April cut the town off from supply trains and the family twisted hay for fuel.

Which actress played Hester-Sue Terhune, the teacher at the blind school?

Ketty Lester, a singer best known for the 1962 hit Love Letters, played Hester-Sue Terhune from 1978 through the final season, first at the blind school and later in Walnut Grove.

Which streaming service announced a new Little House series in January 2025?

Netflix gave the new series a straight-to-series order in January 2025, with Rebecca Sonnenshine as showrunner, reviving reboot plans first floated in 2020.

What happened to Laura's little brother Charles Frederick, born in Walnut Grove in 1875?

He died at nine months old, in August 1876 near South Troy, Minnesota, while the family was moving east; 'Freddie' never appears in the books, which skip the Burr Oak, Iowa years.

Who wrote and conducted the TV series' theme, 'The Little House'?

David Rose, the bandleader whose 1962 instrumental The Stripper topped the charts, wrote and conducted the theme and scored the series throughout its run.

Where in California was location filming for the pilot movie done?

Sonora, in the Sierra foothills of Tuolumne County, supplied the open grassland for the pilot's prairie scenes before production moved to a permanent ranch set for the series.

In season 4, the show peaked at what rank in the Nielsen ratings, NBC's best that season?

Seventh place in the 1977-78 Nielsen season rankings was the show's peak, a year in which it was also the network's highest-rated series.

In September 1976 the series moved to which weeknight slot, where it stayed until cancellation?

Monday at 8:00 ET became the show's home from September 1976 until the end in 1983, after two seasons on Wednesday nights at the same hour.

Which blind teacher at the Winoka school marries Mary Ingalls and later regains his sight to become a lawyer?

Adam Kendall, played by Linwood Boomer, marries Mary in the 1978 episode The Wedding; after an explosion restores his sight, he passes the bar and practises law.

Which Harper children's editor commissioned the new illustrations for the 1953 uniform edition?

Ursula Nordstrom, who ran Harper's juvenile department from 1940 to 1973, commissioned the new drawings and also edited Charlotte's Web and Goodnight Moon.

In The Long Winter, Almanzo Wilder and which friend risk their lives to fetch wheat for the starving town?

Cap Garland rode out with Almanzo between blizzards to buy seed wheat from a lone homesteader on the open prairie and haul it back to the starving town.

How many episodes long was Laura, the Prairie Girl, the 1975-76 Japanese anime based on the books?

26 episodes of Sōgen no Shōjo Laura ran on Japan's TBS network from October 1975 to March 1976, adapting the early books.