Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home & Museum (Rocky Ridge Farm)

Rocky Ridge Farm is where the Little House books were written, not where they happen. Laura and Almanzo Wilder came to Missouri in 1894, drawn by advertisements for the Land of the Big Red Apples, and paid $100 down on 40 acres outside Mansfield. Almanzo, who had walked with a cane since a bout of diphtheria, built the farmhouse in stages from 1895 to 1912 out of local materials until it had ten rooms. The Wilders became known around the county for their farming, and that is how Laura began to write, with articles on farm life for the Missouri Ruralist in 1911.

Their daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, was already a professional writer, and she edited her mother's work and helped place it in national magazines. In 1928 Rose had a Sears catalog cottage, the Rock House, built for her parents across the ridge, and lived in the farmhouse herself. The 1929 crash took most of the Wilders' savings. In the Rock House Laura wrote the first four Little House books; Little House in the Big Woods came out in 1932, when she was 65. She and Almanzo moved back to the farmhouse in 1936. He died in 1949, and she died on February 10, 1957.

Visitors have come every year since 1957. The farmhouse has been a National Historic Landmark since 1991. The Rock House, sold after Laura's death, was bought back in the early 1990s and is about a third of a mile away by path.