2025 Laura Days Entertainment: “The Hard Winter of 1880-1881” with Cindy Wilson

Author and historian Cindy Wilson will join us to talk about the real history of the Hard Winter of 1880-1881, which Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about in The Long Winter. She will talk about the weather and the railroads, share some interesting stories from the winter, and show some amazing photographs taken in March and April of 1881 that show why the trains could not get west to towns like De Smet.

If you have time, re-read The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder before the event, available in the museum’s gift shop, as is The Beautiful Snow by Cindy Wilson, Cindy is the author of the award-winning books The Beautiful Snow: The Ingalls Family, the Railroads, and the Hard Winter of 1880-81 and We Suffered Much: Charles Wood Irish and the Dakota  Territory Railroad Survey of 1879-1881.