The Beautiful Snow: The Ingalls Family, the Railroads, and the Hard Winter of 1880-81

by Cindy Wilson, Margarita Sikorskaia;Margarita Sikorskaia (Illustrator)

The Beautiful Snow placed gold in the 2021 IPPY awards, and was a finalist in the 2020 National Indie Excellence Awards. The Long Winter is one of the most memorable novels in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series. It beautifully details the dramatic events of The Hard Winter of 1880-81, a harrowing time with months of never-ending blizzards leading to railroad blockades that all but cut off fledgling communities. But what really happened that winter? Lively and rewarding, The Beautiful Snow is a new look at The Hard Winter. Pulling from nearly three thousand regional newspaper articles, The Beautiful Snow weaves the historical record around and through Wilder's fictionalized account. From the tireless efforts to dig out the railroad blockades, to lavish oyster parties, to carefully spun boosterism, The Hard Winter comes to life with extraordinary tales of survival, resilience, and defiance that adds rich context to Wilder's beloved novel.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Book Club

358 pages, Paperback

First published February 7, 2020

Reviews

[Cheryl Malandrinos · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Little House books, or pioneer history, you'll want to grab a copy of The Beautiful Snow by Cindy Wilson.

If you've read the Little House books, you will recall The Long Winter, where Wilder describes the winter of 1880 - 81 and her family's struggle to survive when blizzards from October through April cut off the railroad town of De Smet, SD from essential supplies.

Wilson's thoroughly researched account of that hard winter, weaves history through Wilder's fictionalized tale, focusing on the weather, the railroads, and the pioneering spirit that kept the settlers holding on until the trains finally arrived in May.

Wow! What a book. It's not a book I could read in one or even two sittings. Wilson does a fabulous job of providing so much information that you need time to digest it.

The introductions and background set the stage for a month by month journey through that hard winter of 1880-81. Each month starts off with a calendar that shows weather reports compiled by various newspaper articles. The Beautiful Snow brings you through that period of American history as settlers were wooed into moving west and following the railroad, all to be stranded on the unforgiving prairie once the blizzards started. Historical figures, maps, photos, and informative sidebars add to the reading experience, truly immersing you in the time period. The epilogue and various appendices provide additional information that rounds out this account perfectly.

Though I definitely believe this is a book for Wilder fans, history lovers and those interested in the history of the American railroads will enjoy The Beautiful Snow. I will treasure this book as part of my ever-growing Laura Ingalls Wilder collection.

Highly recommended!

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes people fall down rabbit holes and stumble upon books like The Beautiful Snow. Sometimes authors fall down very deep rabbit holes and end up writing books like The Beautiful Snow. This seems to have been a labor of love on the part of Wilson that turned into a mammoth project in serious need of a development editor. Anyone interested in the old railways (engineering, working in winter, corporate involvement in western expansion) will find this full of well-researched information — not so much for those interested in more on the Ingalls and Wilders during The Long Winter.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was well researched and very detailed. It wasn’t what I expected, I wanted more of the human factor and it was more about all the railroads. Every line, track and conductor was talked about in detail. This book would be better for people who are really into trains.

[Annette Whipple · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Cindy Wilson has created such a resource for serious Little House fans.

Laura Ingalls Wilder told the (somewhat fictionalize) tale of her family surviving the winter of 1880-1881 in The Long Winter. Now, we have The Beautiful Snow to better understand that winter.

I was amazed at the depth of Wilson's research. The format of the book is perfect as it goes month-by-month. Wilson examined the published book, Wilder's draft manuscripts of Pioneer Girl, as well as resources--especially newspapers--from that winter. I appreciated not only the weather updates, but also understanding how each railroad and town had its own unique situation.

The Beautiful Snow includes many, many historical images to better help the reader understand and visualize that winter.

In many ways this is an academic book and thoroughly researched. Wilson crafted a great resource for Little House fans. Though the monthly accounts were often similar (trains stuck, more snow), Cindy Wilson wrote about each situation in a way that made the reader wanting more. Even the appendix is not to be missed.

I wish I had know about Cindy Wilson's research and this book when I was conducting my own research for The Laura Ingalls Wilder Companion (published by Chicago Review Press).

This is an incredible resource and one I highly recommend!

[Jill Crosby · Rating 1 out of 5]

You really, really, REALLY have to be fascinated with railroads to get much out of this book, which does a deep dive of the facts surrounding Laura Ingalls Wilder’s American classic, The Long Winter.

I wanted to love this book, but the glut of ink dedicated to the 4 railroads that served SW MN & Eastern South Dakota areas in 1880-81 puts the brakes to any reading flow you may have developed when reading about the things I’d assumed the book would cover—the doings of other people in the towns, how food was stored, how the hay was twisted into fuel sticks, how laundry was done—so many details I wanted more insight into.

No photos accompany the text, save for the handful that show shoveling crews standing next to 15-foot banks they’ve made of the drifts covering various railroad tracks. No photos of towns, their buildings, their interiors (where the women spent A LOT of time that winter. But the reason why this is the case is only mentioned once as a question the author poses to herself, and doesn’t bother to dig into. She is FAR more dedicated to describing the latest efforts by townsmen who go out to shovel off the tracks. Spoiler alert: the job never changes.)

I’d been led to believe by descriptions and reviews that this book would be like Minneapolis Strib feature writer Peg Meier’s gold standard “Bring Warm Clothes”—a currated series of journal entries, letters, newspaper articles, photos, drawings, farmer’s ledgers, etc to give Wilder’s work a basis in empirical fact. What I ended up with is a large-sized treatise on railroad politics, construction, maps engineering, & costs, and how these affected the people trying to settle the prairie in the late 1800’s. Avoid, unless you are a student of the expansion of the US rail system

[Kirsten Jaster · Rating 3 out of 5]

Snowed...

Well written college essay type only published as a book. While I love history...I'm not sure the author could have made this one any more boring if they tried(and please don't since I read numerous times in the first 30% there is a sequel or one being written) . writing great, grammar, spelling all that jazz is great. Subject matter should have been interesting...fell.flat. And Over suffered through TA Larsons Wyoming history book second edition in school...twice and once as an adult. Wilson is the literary heir to TA Larson, factual, functional, historical, educational, and dull. Anyways...the actual book comprises only 60% rest are the bibliography.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was delighted to find this book, as it focuses on the facts behind my favorite Little House book "The Long Winter".

Her research was evident, and she did a good job weaving the factual evidence into Laura's words to help flesh out the true meaning of that terrible Winter. I learned some things I hadn't known which shed light on the stories in the book.

However, there were long stretches that were extremely repetitive, a little hard to keep straight, but you didn't really care because it was all the same anyway.

It was still an enjoyable read because of the associated material, but maybe tighter editing could have made this a better one.

[Michelle San Antonio · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Long Winter is one of my favorite Little House books, and I was fascinated by the idea of a book that delved into the realities of that winter, based on actual historical records. And while it was fascinating, it really reads like a textbook, and was kind of monotonous at times. That's not to say it's poorly written - it's incredibly well-researched, and contains lots of really great information - but I thought it would be a little more interwoven with The Long Winter, in the way that Pioneer Girl was laid out. It's a good book, for sure, but just a little too academic for my tastes.

[Aubrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very interesting look at The Long Winter from a more historical perspective. It was really fun to read newspaper accounts from Waseca and Janesville and other towns near me about the weather and conditions and running (or not running) of the trains.
I don’t think I’d reread this, but I would recommend it to Little House fans!

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are a fan of the Little House books and have enjoyed reading the many books about Laura Ingalls Wilder, her mother Caroline, and her daughter Rose, then this book is for you. Wilson has done an impressive amount of research which all started rather innocently. In The Long Winter, the "Tracy cut" is blamed for the train not reaching DeSmet, South Dakota. This posed hardships for the Ingalls family and the whole town. Wilson wanted to locate the cut which means a narrow area cut into the landscape for the railroad bed. Snow can build up in these cuts which become very deep and are extremely difficult to get through especially when there is storm after storm after storm. Yes, there is a "Tracy cut" and Wilson found it, but the bigger problem was a cut west of Sleepy Eye. Wilson goes through the hard winter of 1880-1881 month by month starting with a calendar of all the snow storms, blizzards and cold temperatures. Each month explores what may have taken place in that month in The Long Winter, but also the facts around railroad conditions, the weather's impact, availability of food, fuel and other necessities, happenings in towns plus "boosterism" which looked at how the newspapers portrayed what was going on. She examines quite a large area in southwest Minnesota and the Dakota Territory. DeSmet which was near the end of the railroad line did suffer but other towns not quite as much. Wilson dispels some of the details in The Long Winter which is after all fictional, but says Wilder portrays well the bigger truth of that winter. Again, I can't say enough about the research that went into this book.

[Beth Cato · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book at the gift shop of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Burr Oak, Iowa, earlier this year.

The Long Winter has been my favorite Wilder book since I was a child. It's an intense read: the family and the rest of the young pioneer town of De Smet buried in sequential heavy snow storms that prevent trains from coming through with supplies. This nonfiction book isn't intended to fact check Wilder's fictional-autobiographical work, but what it does do to great success is place genuine historical context around the events of that winter. In particular, it would be of interest to fans of trains; I found it incredibly educational about locomotives, and I now have a new vocabulary term: snow bucking.

I'm going to lead a library book club discussion on The Long Winter in a few weeks, and this book is definitely coming with me to be passed around.

[Mary Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing research and great photographs. Maybe a little tedious in places with railroad details but overall fascinating.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating how the author Cindy Wilson drilled deep to research the theme of The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. “I mostly associate that time period with endless storms and near starvation.” After reading this book I understand the weather was challenging....and while it was not nearly a 6 month blizzard it came close to living up to the mythology that has risen around it” while not everyone was starving due to snow blockades“ there were pockets of deep deprivation especially in the DeSmet area..

[Patti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who has been a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books will know the story of The Long Winter. In a new railroad town on the Dakota prairie, Laura and her family survive a particularly bad winter that nearly sees the town starve to death.

In The Beautiful Snow, author Cindy Wilson has researched newspaper articles and other accounts of that winter to give a detailed impression of what was happening at the time. This includes information on just what made all of the snow such a hard problem for the railroads to keep up with as well as what impeded efforts to get supplies to these towns that were cut off.

Wilson uses maps to show the region and where the trains were running at the time. It’s good to know because it can be hard to visualize in this day and age of highways that keep us connected. A train line might have been open to one town but not another. Going back to her books, I didn’t really understand the relationship of Walnut Grove to DeSmet (where she begins and ends the book By The Shores of Silver Lake). Finally, she also shows railroad documents that also create a better understanding of how things were working more than 140 years ago.

The result is a book that is a must-read for fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. Wilson takes it month-by-month to show how much snow was actually falling and what the response was to that. Each month she shows a calendar of when the snow was actually falling, compiled from reading through newspaper archives. She refers back to The Long Winter frequently and tries to match events described there to accounts she finds in newspaper archives. I think it snowed less than what I imagined reading her books, but it was still pretty hard to fathom having all of that snow.

To read my full review, please go to: https://thoughtsfromthemountaintop.co...

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This provides a good historical background for reading The Long Winter. It does read like an encyclopedia with each chapter following the same formula about events in Wilder’s novel, weather, railroads, food, fuel, etc. . .with each section divided into subsections for each of the major railroad lines. This was tedious and even repetitive reading at times, even though I was fascinated by much of the actual information. On the other hand, I would have liked more information about how the settlers coped with the weather and the lack of supplies than about what the railroad companies were doing.

I appreciated the maps (I used book darts to find them as I read) and the calendars at the beginning of each chapter. I live in MN along the Winona & St. Peter so many of the town names were familiar to me, which probably made the book more interesting to me than to a Little House fan living in a different part of the country.

[JulieAnn · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a railroad enthusiast, this book is for you. If you are a weather junkie, this book is for you. If you are a Laura Ingalls Wilder fan, this book is for you. This was an excellent resource for me to understand the real life situations of the hard winter of 1880-81 -- very well researched. I heard her speak virtually for My Credit Union Adventure Club and she was fascinating. So many interesting stories came out of this winter. My favorite being about boosterism and how the press construed the plight of the people.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars for the meticulous record keeping and photos the author included. This was very dry however. My favorite sections were the ones connecting the plot of the Long Winter and the Ingalls family. All the data about temperatures, railroads and such were very tedious.

[L B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I skimmed much of this. Wonderfully researched but way more than I wanted to know. I loved the photographs of the snow drifts and the excavations of the railroad tracks.

[Bosewichte123 · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 1/2, maybe...kind of dry and repetitive

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very thoroughly researched, but I thought it was a boring topic, and I've read just about every book published about the Laura Ingalls Wilder family.

[Susann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fabulous Background history to Laura Ingalls Wilder's book, The Long Winter

Am amazing job of research by the author using local newspapers of the times, Laura's actual book, and manuscripts and letters between Laura and Rose Wilder Lane. What an awful winter it was during 1880-81 for the many new and old settlers in Minnesota and the Dakota Territory. A large bit of hype by the railroads painted a rosy picture of land for the taking out west, magnificent crop potential and money to be made by the barrelsfull. No one, least of all the railroads, were prepared for the bitter blizzards starting in October that prevented most tracks from being used that winter. No fuel, little food and temperatures in the minus twenties and thirties. Amazingly few lives were lost but a lot of suffering was had by businesses and families. The book chapters were organized by month with a calendar showing each day's weather, words from the novel and comparisons with the actual day to day life. The newspaper accounts were quoted heavily, often quite humorous, and stories of individual and group bravery. The tales of hundreds of men shoveling out the rails from huge drifts only to have it all filled up the next day was heartbreaking. Many have blamed the railroad companies for the debacle but they suffered too and did their best during impossible circumstances to get the trains through. Excellent book and well written.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well this one was different than I expected. It was extremely well researched (over 1170 end notes) and well edited. Many quotations were included and were used well. Wilson is obviously passionate about her topic, the winter of 1880-81 as written about in Laura Ingalls Wilder's book The Hard Winter. She is a good writer in terms of form.

However, this was a difficult book to get through. For one thing, the Ingalls make up maybe 15% of the book, and I think using their name at the beginning of the title is disingenuous. Most of it is pretty much endless rehashing of the endless storms in multiple Dakota and Minnesota towns, the mails not getting through, people burning whatever they can find for heat, railroad superintendents (and there are several of them) trying to get the cuts open. How many ways can you say that the newspapers ran out of newsprint and had to print half-pages, sometimes on linen? Or that no supplies were getting through, and the railroads couldn't get the cuts cleared? Or that the people had to try to find sources of seed wheat? (The story of Almanzo and Cap going for the seed wheat, familiar to Wilder's readers, is repeated in three different places.) I appreciate the author's efforts to add context to the story of the Long Winter, but it was not an interesting read, and it was entirely too long.

[Cindy Dyson Eitelman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being a devotee of all things Little House related, I found parts of this book extremely interesting. But not nearly as many parts as I hoped. It was a whole lot railroad history and facts about how the railroad companies tried to deal with the snow. And that part was pretty interesting…but I’d had enough after five or so pages of it.

Then she treated the winter month by month, with a section for each describing how the Ingalls family got along, then how the various settlements in and around De Smet fared. For each settlement she described newspaper publishing, fuel, food, railroad, human entertainment, and a vague subject she called “boosterism”. This latter described how the various entities (newspaper writers, politicians, railroad companies, ets) promoted life in the Dakota territories despite the little inconvenience of snow.

The book was well written and very much well researched, and it had lots of interesting stuff in it, but I found it a little bit overkill for me. Another history buff might say it was just right, though, so I won’t try to speak for everyone. Just my opinion—a great book to check out of the library but I’m glad not to need to own a copy.

[Lisa Gemert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is perfect for lovers of the Little House series, and in particular "The Long Winter."

It's not an easy read - don't pick it up thinking it's going to read like a Laura Ingalls novel.

It's very much like a book-length research report on the trains in the area during the winter of 1880-1881. It's laid out well, and organized well, and it's a little like taking a peek behind the curtain of the Wilder novel.

For me, it was inspiring to see the research the author did come to fruition. I love how she took a passion for a favorite novel and showed what was behind it. It felt like giving the novel a level of respect it doesn't always get.

Another reason I liked it was the opportunity it gave me to consider how dependent we still are on goods moving across the country.

This was on my wish list, and it was a Christmas present. I'm glad I read it, and I recommend it if you are interested in the story behind the story.

The biographies of the newspaper editors in the back were a great addition to the book.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of history book I would like to write. The author had questions inspired by events and elements in an historical fiction book, went out, and answered them with research…perfect.

I personally loved how the author organized the text; each chapter followed a month of “The Long Winter”, including a summary of the relevant novel events, as well as historical details gleaned from local newspapers and railroad archives. The patterns were effective and the numerous vignettes were interesting. Double bonus points are awarded simply because one of the vignettes was about my hometown—in fact, Oskaloosa is noted in the index three times!

This book may not be interesting for all LIW fans, but it was greatly enjoyed by this one! I can’t wait for the companion book, looking further into the railroad history connected with “By the Shores of Silver Lake”!

[Jane Irish Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many of us, myself included, author Cindy Wilson was fascinated by the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, in particular her depiction of the Hard Winter of 1880-1881 in The Long Winter. Wilson became curious about the facts behind the story, in particular as they related to the railroads, and "the superintendent from the East." That curiosity led her to scour newspapers throughout that area in that time period, resulting in this excellent book, highly recommended to any Little House fan.

[Diane Sugars · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting, well planned out book! I bought this book at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Mansfield Missouri and I was drawn to it by the stunningly beautiful cover! I loved all the information in this book. It reads as though it is a companion textbook, (but do not let that turn you away, this is an amazing book not a boring textbook at all!!) any way it is an amazing companion to The Long Winter, it gives you so much information and insight into what was going on in the entire area of DeSmet during that long winter! I highly recommend this book!!!

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author began working on this book after selecting The Long Winter for a neighborhood book club. She spent two years researching the Hard Winter of 1880-81, seeing how it lined up to Laura Ingalls Wilder's novel. I was amazed at how much historical information she found. The title of the book comes from a newspaper clipping from 1881. I did take a long time reading the book. i understood it to be history and I took my time.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve got a lot of technical issues with this book... That said, the essential points being advanced by the author earn it a 4-star rating on their own. “The Beautiful Snow” provides us a long-needed bigger picture in which Wilder’s novel is situated.

De Smet, Dakota Territory was located at one of the westernmost stops of any of the railroads expanding westward through this part of the country. Survey, construction, and arrival of new settlers had happened so quickly - most arrived the spring/summer before the Hard Winter - there was barely a sense of community among those facing this ordeal. Settlers in these new RR towns in a largely timber-free district were extremely dependent during these early years on timely and regular delivery of food and fuel, not to mention shipping their wheat to market.

[tina dills · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting Read for LH Fans

As a daughter of a railroader, a rail fan myself and an avid follower of anything Laura Ingalls Wilde, I enjoyed the book. The author’s authoritative yet conversational style made the book an easy read. It has caused me to pick up and reread the Long Winter again.