come fly with me

Last week, fellow Laura Ingalls Wilder researcher Rebecca Webb emailed me and shared a fantastic aerial photograph of Charles Ingalls' former preemption claim north of Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Of course, it's easy to use googlemaps or bing or terraserver or your map-site-of-choice and view/download satellite photos. Why is this one so exciting?

It's from 1938.

Rebecca's photo came from the John R. Borchert Map Library at the Meredith Wilson Library (University of Minnesota Libraries) in Minneapolis. It's also available at the Farm Service Agency of the United States Department of Agriculture in Redwood Falls and the Rural Development Office in Marshall. I've uploaded a copy of the 1938 photo of the Walnut Grove area - the same as Rebecca's photo, this one is from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources HERE. The Ingalls preemption claim only (dugout and Wonderful House site, NW 18-109-39) is shown above. CLICK HERE to see the quarter section in biggie view with greater detail.

Photographs such as this were taken beginning in 1938 in connection with the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and were used to make geological survey maps. The Aerial Photography Field Office (APFO) in Salt Lake City, Utah, is in charge of the photographs for the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS). They are used to track changes in the land over the years, which is exactly what interests "Little House" researchers about them. Redwood County was photographed in 1938, 1955, 1962, 1968, 1974, 1978, 1984, 1996, and annually beginning in 2002.

I am now taking back what I said in my April 28 blog about the location of the tableland. Obviously, I've been obsesing over this for a while now; site photos soon. Because the Plum Creek area is so heavily wooded today, it's hard to known what-was-what back in Laura's day. Although the 1938 photograph was taken fifty years after the Ingallses lived there, the fact that there were a heck of a lot fewer trees seventy years ago makes it easier to see real landmarks and swear you can pick out others.

Remember that the Harold Gordon family moved to the farm in 1947, the same year Garth Williams visited. According to a 1998 article in Laura's Plum Creek Newsletter (Volume 2, Number 2), published by the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Walnut Grove, Williams went to the newspaper office to ask where Charles Ingalls' land was, and nobody knew. But Walter Swoffer, born in Walnut Grove in 1888, remembered playing in a dugout on the Gordon farm as a boy, and the Gordon farm turned out to be the preemption claim site.

Do you see the footbridge? Is that the one Garth Williams photographed? Do you see a ford (or another bridge) across the creek? Paths? Was that the path that went to the barn east of the dugout? Do you see wider bit of the creek that suggests it's the swimming hole? Hmm, is that the big rock? What about THE TABLELAND? That's got to be it in the area covered in trees today; no wonder nobody can see it. And it happens to be right where Laura located it on her map.

Comparing Laura's drawings to current and past photographs, I'm now curious about something else: the site of The Wonderful House. The Gordons have always said that they didn't know for sure where it stood, but suspected that it was located halfway between the current farmhouse (built prior to 1938) and the dugout site because there had been a fenced area with a corncrib in that area. (Is it on the 1938 photo?) An old outbuilding west of the existing barn was torn down in 1991 and found to have been built with square nails, but it showed no evidence of having ever been part of a house.

Laura remembered that The Wonderful House was protected by the creek and a firebreak, which suggests that perhaps it was really located in the vicinity of the parking area today. Or perhaps it across the creek yet again, and located in the area north of the obvious bridge.

Waiting for the photographs that will answer those questions...
- posted by pioneergirl at 7:41 PM