the glorious fourth

The 38-Star Flag became the Official United States Flag on July 4th, 1877. This flag was to last for 13 years, so it would have been flown during all of the years covered in the De Smet "Little House" books published by Laura Ingalls Wilder. (On the Way Home and West From Home were published posthumously.) This was the flag mentioned in Little Town on the Prairie (Chapter 8, "Fourth of July"): The whole crowd was moving across the railroad tracks and out on the prairie. On a pole set up there, the American flag fluttered against the sky. The sun was shining warm and a cool breeze was blowing.

The De Smet crowd, of course, was gathered at the racetrack. A great ring of sod had been broken, and the sod carried off. The breaking plow with its coulter had left the black earth smooth and level. In the middle of the ring and all around it the prairie grasses were waving, except where men and buggies had made trampled tracks.

The racetrack was east of Eliza Jane Wilder's homestead claim, and it was used as a racetrack for decades and decades. You can tell where the track was, even today.
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:15 PM