Dugout site from the creek - inscription board is about 5ft high.
Plum Creek is an unremarkable little stream which winds it's way north and west of Walnut Grove. Its claim to fame is of course that it ran through the Ingalls farm. More than that, for a time they actually lived in a sod house dug into its bank. To get to the bank requires going through the modern farmyard. An old boarded house was located here before the modern house and it has been supposed that this was Pa's farm house. Then the path takes us over a modern bridge a few yards from the dugout site. I was particularly interested to see how much it had changed from Laura's description. The first obvious change is the number of trees growing on the eastern bank by the dugout site. Laura was quite clear that no trees grew on this bank. The dugout site is now only a depression in the ground. with a gully worn by feet making their way to the river bank. Laura was right about one thing though, when the river floods the western bank will be underwater and the eastern bank with its dugout would have been safe. A little to the south of the dugout site is a spring of water as Laura described. 
A slab of rock (about 4ft across) on the western bank opposite the spring is variously described the tableland or the boulder by various guides. It can be neither since it is totally in the wrong place. Even if it is much larger and has sunk it is only one of many rocks of various sizes and types strewn all over the area - probably deposited during an ice age. The large boulder Laura describes was on the top of the eastern bank but there is no sign of it today. In fact the farmer seems to have cleared part of his crop up there so people can see this for themselves. I wonder to what extent the slab of rock is being used to satisfy people in order to prevent them wandering all over his farm? I can't say I blame him.
The whistle stop nature of our tour meant that there was no time to find the actual tableland and swimming hole etc. but rather we decided to walk the 2 miles back to Walnut Grove to get a feel of the journey that Laura and Mary would have made to school. Our path would not have been too different from the one they would have taken. In many way this is the least changed of all the home sites and is perhaps the closest we can get today to Laura's world.
Rocky Ridge Museum, Rocky Ridge House, Mansfield, Mansfield Cemetery
Kansas Prairie, Independence Kansas, Keystone South Dakota,
De Smet, Pa's Claim site, The Homestead, De Smet Cemetery, De Smet Pageant.
Tracy, Walnut Grove Museum,Plum Creek, Walnut Grove Pageant.
South Troy, Lake Pepin, Pepin Museum, Big Woods house.
Burr Oak, Ia., Vinton Iowa.
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