Laura Ingalls Wilder, one of America's best known authors, was born in 1867 near Pepin, Wisconsin, and wrote her "Little House" books at Rocky Ridge Farm, her home for more than sixty years. On July 17, 1894, Laura, her husband Almanzo Wilder, and their seven-year-old daughter Rose left De Smet, South Dakota, in search of a new home, traveled by covered wagon, arrived in Mansfield on August 30, and on September 24 purchased forty acres of land that became Rocky Ridge, a dairy, fruit, and poultry farm later enlarged to nearly two hundred acres. In 1911 Laura began working as a journalist writing about rural life, and between 1932 and 1943 she published the "Little House" books from her memories of pioneer life. Almanzo died at Rocky Ridge in 1949 at the age of ninety-two, and Laura lived there until her death in 1957 at age ninety. Their daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, began her writing career in 1915 on The San Francisco Bulletin, later served as a reporter in Europe after World War I, and became known for her short stories, biographies, and novels. During the 1920s and 1930s she again made Rocky Ridge her home, where her novel Old Home Town portrayed turn-of-the-century Mansfield and where in 1932 she wrote Let the Hurricane Roar in the white farmhouse. That same year Laura Ingalls Wilder published Little House in the Big Woods, the first book in her pioneer series; Farmer Boy followed in 1933, telling of Almanzo's boyhood, and seven more "Little House" books were published. Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane are revered for writings that stress independence, courage, and American ideals.