Wilder Homestead and Birthplace of Rose Wilder Lane

The novelist this bronze describes went on to a second reputation in politics. Rose Wilder Lane's 1943 book The Discovery of Freedom made her, with Isabel Paterson and Ayn Rand, one of the founding mothers of the American libertarian movement. Her adoptive grandson and heir, Roger MacBride, ran for president as the Libertarian candidate in 1976. After Lane died in 1968, MacBride found the manuscript of The First Four Years, her mother's account of the farm on this hill, and it was published in 1971 without editing by either of them.

What the plaque says

Wilder Homestead and Birthplace of Rose Wilder Lane On the low hill immediately west of this spot stood the homestead claim shanty of Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Mrs. Wilder (1867-1957) is known all over the world as the author of the "Little House" books, a series of auto- biographical accounts of pioneering by the Ingalls and Wilder families. Six of her books have their settings in the De Smet area. The First Four Years tells of farm life at this location from 1885-1889. A shanty on the hilltop was the birthplace of the Wilders' only surviving child Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968). Mrs. Lane became a well-known novelist, journalist and political essayist. Two of her 1930's novels, Free Land and Let The Hurricane Roar describe South Dakota pioneering. She also wrote biographies, translated books and served as a foreign correspondent. Her last reporting assignment took her to Viet Nam in 1965, when at 78 Rose Wilder Lane was America's oldest war correspondent. Although her career included travels around the world, Mrs. Lane stated that the entire pattern of her life was formed by the immense prairie skies, the acres of waving grain and the struggling saplings of her Dakota childhood. One and one half miles north of this spot is another quarter section of land which was the tree claim of Laura and Almanzo Wilder. Some of the original tree plantings still survive. Here the Wilders also lived during their early married life, experiencing a fire which destroyed their home, the death of an infant son and other natural disasters which were a part of the daily lives of the courageous South Dakota pioneers. "No one," Mrs. Wilder wrote, "who has not pioneered can understand the fascination and the terror of it."

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ingalls Homestead and the De Smet Historic Homes — 3.0 mi
  The quarter section a mile from De Smet that Charles Ingalls filed on in 1880 and proved up in 1886, the house in town he built, and the cottonwoods he planted.

More markers nearby

• Father Pierre Jean De Smet — 1.6 mi
• St. Petri Lutheran Church — 1.7 mi
• Site of the Ingalls Homestead 1880 — 2.6 mi
• De Smet Forest / De Smet — 2.7 mi