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50 free Little House on the Prairie trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
42 free Little House on the Prairie trivia questions with answers. Little House on the Prairie lives on in reruns, on Peacock, and in a Netflix reboot, and this quiz covers the whole world of it: the NBC series that ran from 1974 to 1983 (Pa, Half Pint, the Olesons, Mary's blindness, the town blowing itself up in the finale), Laura Ingalls Wilder's nine books, and the real family history that both fictionalised. The easy questions are for anyone who watched with their grandmother. The hard ones ask which book was published first, how many actresses auditioned to play Ma, where Walnut Grove was really filmed, what Laura and Almanzo called each other, and why the library award named for Wilder was renamed in 2018. It works for a fan gathering, a classroom, or a family quiz night. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the series, the books, the cast and Laura Ingalls Wilder herself, and each question carries its source.
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Q 01In the TV series, the Ingalls farm sits on the banks of which stream near Walnut Grove?
Plum Creek
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.
Q 02Who played Charles Ingalls, the family patriarch known as Pa?
Michael Landon
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.
Q 03Which actress played Laura Ingalls, beating out more than 500 child actresses for the part?
Melissa Gilbert
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.
Q 04What nickname did the star and producer give the young actress playing Laura on set?
Half Pint
"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."
Q 05On which network did the series air from 1974 to 1983?
NBC
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.
Q 06Why was the role of little Carrie Ingalls played by twins?
Hollywood work rules limited how long small children could be on set
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.
Q 07What happens to Mary Ingalls at the end of season four?
She goes blind
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.
Q 08Which orphan boy do the Ingalls adopt after meeting him in the town of Winoka?
Albert
Matthew Labyorteaux's Albert stayed with the family after they returned from Dakota to Walnut Grove.
Q 09Which family owns the mercantile in Walnut Grove?
The Olesons
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.
Q 10Who played Nellie Oleson?
Alison Arngrim
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.
Q 11In Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, Nellie Oleson was a composite of how many real girls?
Three
Three real girls, Nellie Owens, Genevieve Masters and Stella Gilbert, were rolled into the one blonde tormentor Wilder named Nellie Oleson.
Q 12Whom does Nellie eventually marry on the show?
Percival Dalton
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.
Q 13Which character arrives in season six as Walnut Grove's new schoolteacher?
Eliza Jane Wilder
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.
Q 21Which producer acquired the Little House rights and hired Landon, only to leave in 1974 after clashing with him?
Ed Friendly
NBC backed Landon, and Friendly ended up a silent partner with a credit on every episode.
Q 22Pa's actor went on to star in which series about an angel on probation, from 1984 to 1989?
Highway to Heaven
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.
Q 23The star of the show died in 1991, at age 54, of what illness?
Pancreatic cancer
Q 14After Pa's actor left following season eight, what was the series renamed?
Little House: A New Beginning
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.
Q 15How does the 1984 finale movie The Last Farewell end?
The townspeople blow up their own buildings
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.
Q 16Where were the exteriors of Walnut Grove and the Ingalls farm actually filmed?
Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley, California
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.
Q 17Who played Dr. Hiram Baker, Walnut Grove's physician?
Kevin Hagen
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.
Q 18Which earlier Western made the actor who played Pa a star, as Little Joe Cartwright?
Bonanza
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.
Q 19How many colour episodes of the series were produced?
204
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.
Q 20The pilot movie, first aired March 30, 1974, was based on which of Wilder's books?
Little House on the Prairie, the third book
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.
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.
Q 24Melissa Sue Anderson got a 1978 Emmy nomination as Mary and won the next year for what?
An ABC Afterschool Special
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.
Q 25Which of Wilder's books was published first, in 1932?
In the Big Woods
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.
Q 26The 1933 book Farmer Boy is about the boyhood of which character?
Almanzo Wilder
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.
Q 27The novel Little House on the Prairie is set in which state, where the family squatted on Osage land?
Kansas
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.
Q 28What breed of dog was Jack, the family pet in the early books?
Bulldog
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.
Q 29How many of the Little House books were Newbery Honor Books?
Five
Five of the books were Newbery Honor Books: every volume published from 1937 to 1943 was named one, though none won the medal outright.
Q 30Whose illustrations replaced the originals when the books were reissued in a uniform edition in 1953?
Garth Williams
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.