De Smet, SD

We spent a little over a day in De Smet.  I can say without reservation that this is the best Laura Ingalls Wilder site; if you want to visit only one site, choose this one.  The guides are well informed, the buildings are carefully curated, and the town is nice and easy to navigate.  There is nothing about the TV show here at all, so if you know the story only through television, you should go to Walnut Grove.  The Ingalls family was here longer than at any other site, and their presence is clearly felt.  I will not give you a turn-by-turn review, but tell you some of the highlights.

The guided tour takes you to the first school house that Laura attended in De Smet.  It had been turned into a residence, so there was new siding and flooring.  There were also layers of wallpaper.  The Laura Ingalls Wilder Society heard that there had been a blackboard painted onto the wall.  They scraped through layers of wallpaper until they found some of the blackboard paint.  Our guide said that it would take $60,000 to restore the walls, and so right now they are considering leaving it with layers of wallpaper partially cut away. I think this is an interesting decision, since it gives a sense of the passing of time.  They also cut through the machined-wood flooring to show the original rough-cut floor.

As at the Spring Valley Methodist Church, our guide here was a school teacher.  Both of these guides gave us a large amount of information; they had carefully memorized presentations that were presented with careful, speaker-like diction.  Our Burr Oak guide spoke in a more conversational tone, and it seemed that she was just talking to us.  To me, I find the less formal style much easier to follow.  My brain tends to shut off when I hear the lulling cadence that many speakers use.  I have worked hard to avoid using my "teacher voice" for this very reason.  Please leave a comment about which style works best for you.  One of our presenters also passed around pictures, which teachers often do.  I really dislike this, since it focuses my attention on making sure the pictures are circulating well.

We also saw the Laura Ingalls Pageant.  They portrayed The Long Winter.  The highlight was that Amelia was chosen as an extra.  The play started out by saying that God does not take care of people the way he takes care of the animals because he wants us to be free and take care of ourselves.  For the most part, the play was about what you would expect.  The sets were very well built.  They used ballet dancers to portray the snow.  See the pictures.