The Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway is a named road connecting historic areas that relate to the life of author Laura Ingalls Wilder, best known for writing Little House on the Prairie. The highway was first designated in 1995 as U.S. Route 14 from Lake Benton in southwest Minnesota to Mankato in the south-central part of the state. Since then, it has been extended into South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
Within Minnesota, the highway is primarily made up of US 14 from the South Dakota border eastward to Rochester at U.S. Route 63. A branch extends north on 63 to Lake City, Minnesota where it briefly runs along U.S. Route 61 before following Minnesota State Highway 60 to the Wisconsin border. From Rochester, the highway also runs south along US 63 until the intersection with Minnesota State Highway 16 near Spring Valley. From there, it turns east until meeting U.S. Route 52 near Preston, following that road to the Iowa border.
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“A new talker will often call her caregiver “mommy,” which makes parents worry that the child is confused about who is who. She isn’t. This is a case of limited vocabulary rather than mixed-up identities. When a child has only one word for the female person who takes care of her, calling both of them “mommy” is understandable.”
—Amy Laura Dombro (20th century)
“How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you rip the fronts off houses you’d find swine? The world is a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?”
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)
“If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson’s nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)