Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 'Big Woods' story lives on in Pepin, Wisconsin

PEPIN, Wis. (WKBT) — “Once upon a time… a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.” This opening line launched a legacy.

Laura Ingalls Wilder grew up to chronicle the joys and hardships of frontier life—stories that later became the beloved "Little House" books and, eventually, a hit television series "Little House on the Prairie", starring Melissa Gilbert as Laura. Today, fans still travel to western Wisconsin to see where it all began.

Pepin, Wisconsin—Wilder’s birthplace—is home to a museum dedicated to her life and the memories that inspired her first book, "Little House in the Big Woods". The story focuses on her early years in the region and includes scenes readers still remember decades later: encounters with a bear, tales of Cousin Charley, and the famously odd “pig’s bladder” moment.

Wilder was born in 1867, about 10 miles from Pepin, in the small log home referenced in her writing. The routines of her family—her father hunting to provide food, her mother cooking and preserving for long winters, and young Laura playing alongside her sisters Mary and Carrie—became the foundation of the world she later put on paper...