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?

He agreed to direct the pilot only on condition that he could also play Charles, then ended up running the whole show.

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

She was nine when cast, and Landon nicknamed her "Half Pint" to tell her apart from Melissa Sue Anderson, whom he called "Missy."

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

Melissa Sue Anderson, who played Mary, became "Missy" so the two Melissas could be told apart.

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

Landon had an exclusive NBC contract after Bonanza was cancelled; every one of his series ran on the network for 30 straight years.

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

Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush shared the part; the same rule is why so many TV toddlers are twins.

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

She is sent to a school for the blind in Iowa, where she meets her future husband, the blind teacher Adam Kendall.

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?

Nels was stern and decent, Harriet doting and snobbish, and daughter Nellie became one of TV's great villains.

Who played Nellie Oleson?

Her memoir is titled 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?

Nellie Owens, Genevieve Masters and Stella Gilbert were all rolled into one blonde tormentor.

Whom does Nellie eventually marry on the show?

He was hired to teach her to cook and run the restaurant, and his patience mellowed her; Steve Tracy played him.

Which character arrives in season six as the new schoolteacher, bringing along her brother Almanzo?

Laura and Almanzo were engaged by season's end and agreed to wait a year, then married early in the season seven premiere anyway.

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

The final season centred on Laura and Almanzo, and Charles and Caroline no longer appeared.

How does the 1984 finale movie The Last Farewell end?

Each resident takes a turn dynamiting a building rather than surrender the town, and the sets were really destroyed.

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

Old Tucson Studios stood in for the larger town of Mankato.

How many actresses were auditioned for Caroline Ingalls before Landon chose Karen Grassle?

Landon deliberately cast theatre actors with little TV exposure, including Katherine MacGregor and Richard Bull as the Olesons.

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

He recycled several Bonanza storylines for Little House, and the closing theme first appeared as incidental music in a 1971 Bonanza episode.

How many colour episodes of the series were produced?

David Rose scored the pilot, all of them and the three follow-up movies.

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

That book covers the family's year in Kansas; the series proper then jumped to the Plum Creek setting.

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?

He said he created it after bargaining with God when his daughter was in an accident; it ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989.

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

He announced the diagnosis on The Tonight Show that May, and Melissa Gilbert visited him at his Malibu home before he died.

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

Which Mother Is Mine? aired in 1979; Anderson later became a Canadian citizen.

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

It is set near Pepin, Wisconsin, where a replica log cabin now marks Laura's birthplace.

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

It follows Laura's future husband on his family's New York farm from before his ninth birthday to after his tenth.

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

The cabin stood near modern Independence; 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?

His death on the day Pa leaves in By the Shores of Silver Lake is one of the series' saddest moments.

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

None won the medal outright; the ALA later created a lifetime achievement award named for Wilder, with her as first recipient.

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

Williams, who also drew Charlotte's Web, visited the real Ingalls sites before drawing them.

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

The family lived seven miles north of it in the region called the Big Woods, the setting of her first book.

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

Charles Ingalls filed his homestead claim there in the winter of 1879-80, just before the Hard Winter of 1880-81 that inspired The Long Winter.

What nicknames did Laura and Almanzo use for each other?

He called her Bess, from her middle name Elizabeth, to avoid confusion with his sister, also named Laura.

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

They diversified the farm 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?

Lane was already a successful writer; the two collaborated closely, and often rockily, on the whole series.

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

An invitation to write one article in 1911 turned into a permanent editorial job into the mid-1920s.

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

She died at home in her sleep three days after her birthday, having outlived Almanzo by eight years.

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

It is now the Children's Literature Legacy Award; Wilder had been its first recipient in 1954.

Which book, sixth in the series, covers only an eight-month period, the shortest of any volume?

It describes the Hard Winter of 1880-81 in De Smet, when blizzards cut the town off from supply trains for months.

Per Nielsen, the show logged about how many minutes viewed on Peacock in 2024?

Nearly two-thirds of the audience were adults 35 to 64, and the show over-indexed among Black viewers.

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

It is being made with CBS Studios, following reboot plans first floated in 2020.

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

"Freddie" never appears in the books; Wilder skipped the whole 1876-77 period, including the family's time in Burr Oak, Iowa.

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

The closing theme first appeared as incidental music in a 1971 Bonanza episode, 'Top Hand'.

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

Outdoor dialogue was later looped to avoid stray sounds of cars or aircraft on this period show.

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

It had started slowly; season 2 was the lowest-ranked season of the run.

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

Early reviews had compared the show to The Waltons, a comparison that flattered Michael Landon.

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

The blind school later merges with a Kansas school and moves to Walnut Grove.

Which HarperCollins children's editor commissioned Garth Williams's illustrations for the 1953 reissue?

Eight of the novels were published by Harper & Brothers in Wilder's lifetime.

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

The book covers only about eight months, the shortest span of any volume in the series.

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

Its original title was Sōgen no Shōjo Laura.