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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“For infants and toddlers learning and living are the same thing. If they feel secure, treasured, loved, their own energy and curiosity will bring them new understanding and new skills.”
—Amy Laura Dombro (20th century)
“There is a city myth that country life was isolated and lonely; the truth is that farmers and their families then had a richer social life than they have now. They enjoyed a society organic, satisfying and whole, not mixed and thinned with the life of town, city and nation as it now is.”
—Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1965)
“Never is a historic deed already completed when it is done but always only when it is handed down to posterity. What we call “history” by no means represents the sum total of all significant deeds.... World history ... only comprises that tiny lighted sector which chanced to be placed in the spotlight by poetic or scholarly depictions.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“The highway presents an interesting study of American roadside advertising. There are signs that turn like windmills; startling signs that resemble crashed airplanes; signs with glass lettering which blaze forth at night when automobile headlight beams strike them; flashing neon signs; signs painted with professional touch; signs crudely lettered and misspelled.... They extol the virtues of ice creams, shoe creams, cold creams;...”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)