masters hotel

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Burr Oak was the first Laura Ingalls homesite my 8-year-old daughter and I visited while on a LIW homesite tour last month. It obviously isn’t the biggest of the homesites, but the people there do a wonderful job with what they have. The Ingalls family lived in Burr Oak for about a year, but Laura didn’t include that year in the Little House books. For a few months, the family lived in, and managed the Masters Hotel.The tour begins in the visitor center, which is a historic brick bank building that is across the street and to the north of the Masters Hotel. The woman who sold us the tour tickets said the tour would begin whenever we were ready. We looked around in the gift shop for a few minutes, and then we crossed the street along with the tour guide and a couple of other tour goers, to the Masters Hotel. Once inside, we watched a video that detailed Laura’s life, and I absorbed the awesomeness of standing in a building where the Ingalls family lived.The tour guide, a young woman, really knew her Laura Ingalls facts. And she knew them not just about the Burr Oak museum, but about everything Laura Ingalls. In fact, I’ve now been to five LIW homesites, and she was the only worker at any of the nonprofit sites I’ve visited, who was knowledgeable and seemed to enjoy talking about Laura with guests. We went through each of the rooms on the museum’s main floor. The guide gave us lots of information about the Ingalls family, and about the people that lived in the area when the Ingalls lived there. She encouraged us to take photos, which was very nice. On the museum’s website, there is a photo of the parlor with life-sized Ingalls family dolls sitting in chairs. Those dolls are no longer at the site (fortunately). In the parlor, we saw an antique organ and other antique parlor-type items. We went upstairs, and saw the small rooms where hotel guests spent the night in the hotel. We went downstairs to the lowest level, and saw a small bedroom where the Ingalls family lived for a few months, the kitchen where Ma Ingalls cooked meals for the paying guests, and the large dining rooms where the Ingalls girls helped serve meals. The tour guide shared interesting facts about life in the late 1800s. Behind the hotel there is a covered wagon for photo opps, and a park and creek where Laura played. The gift shop has a large selection of Little House books, plus jewelry, reproduction old-timey kids toys, dolls, t-shirts and pioneer dresses and sunbonnets. The museum was easy to find, it’s right off Highway 52, and there are plenty of signs. The town is very small. Our guide said the town has two businesses, the museum, and Barney’s, the bar next door. The area surrounding Burr Oak is beautiful, with green rolling hills and many creeks and rivers. This is a must-see for Laura lovers, and even those who don’t know much about her would likely enjoy it.

The Masters Hotel is out in the middle of nowhere (though not quite as much as the Independence, KS LHotP site). I grew up in small town Iowa but Burr Oak brought a whole new meaning to the word. The address is a Decorah, IA extension/zip code so don't worry when your mapping service corrects it.My family of four, kids 4 and 9 years old, visited the Masters Hotel in July 2014. It was the first stop on our LHotP northern tour. We arrived at about 11 a.m. and stopped in the visitors' center initially. The young girl behind the counter told us the she would be starting a tour in 10 minutes. We paid the fees and perused the gift shop/renovated bank.Our tour guide was enthusiastic. After a short video in the hotel, she led us through entire building, providing commentary on each room. The hotel is fairly small and my 4 year old son was starting to get pretty antsy, but thankfully we were a small group and there were hands on things for him to engage with. The tour lasted about an hour (depends on how many questions you ask) so it was lunch time when we left.Be aware that there weren't any good family options for lunch in Burr Oak (William Anderson's guidebook mentioned a pizza place next to the hotel, but we were told that it's been closed for 8 years). We asked our tour guide for suggestions. Since we were heading north to Pepin, WI next, she recommended a homestyle Amish restaurant 20 minutes up the road. We unintentionally missed it and ended up snacking in the van until we hit a "larger" town later in the day. So be prepared with sack lunches if you can.All things considered, this is a good stop for the die-hard Laura fan. More hands-on and engaging than the Pepin, WI site, the Masters Hotel gives a good sense of the time the Ingalls spent there. I appreciate the hard work the volunteers spend maintaining the site and sharing their knowledge with tourists like us.

Great tour about the part of Laura's childhood she didn't write about, but stayed tuned...her autobiography is being released in August of 2013. Also interesting opportunity to see what a typical "hotel" was like during prairie times. The nearby store/restaurant was not open when we were there.

My friend and I went on a the tour of the Masters Hotel, which gives you an idea of what it was like when Laura Ingalls Wilder lived there with her family. The tour guide was so funny, and at the end of the tour, he had us all dress up in pioneer clothing and take photos. It wasn't a super long tour, but it was worth the drive out to Burr Oak. The gift shop has some really funny, unique things in it to buy for friends, especially Laura Ingalls Wilder fans. The surrounding area is also gorgeous, and after the tour you can take a beautiful walk around the grounds.

We stopped here as part of our tour of all the Laura Ingalls Wilder sites, and were impressed by this tour. Although we enjoyed all the places we visited, we found that our tour guide here struck a great balance of being informative for adults (she knew her stuff, not just about this particular museum, but the broader background as well) and interesting for small children. This is not that easy to do, but this girl did it well. There were interactive opportunities for children interspersed through the tour, getting them a chance to touch stuff once in a while after seeing lots of stuff they're not allowed to touch. Even the end of the tour was great, with photo opportunities at a covered wagon and costumes of different sizes. Having a playground on the spot where Laura used to play was great as well, and our children became friends with the children of another family on the same tour as us, doing the same tour we are, but in the opposite direction! Fans of the books might miss this spot as it wasn't mentioned in the series for various reasons, but it is a must-see on a Laura tour.

My wife and I recently toured the Masters Hotel, better known as the Laura Ingalls Wilder Park and Museum, on a recent trip through Burr Oak, Iowa. It is one of a number of sites around the United States where Laura Ingalls Wilder's life, whose younger years were made famous on the "Little House on the Prairie" series, has been preserved as a museum. The site is located in Burr Oak just off US-52 approximately 4 miles south of the Minnesota-Iowa state line; La Crosse, Wisconsin is approximately 50 miles to the northeast. In Burr Oak, where Winneshiek County Highway A-18 intersects US-52, head east for about two blocks into the small town and turn north. The Hotel will be on the left, though the tour tickets are purchased in the gift shop located in the former Burr Oak Savings Bank building across the street. We arrived just after 10:30 on a Thursday morning and were the only customers there. As such, we had the advantage of getting what seemed like a private tour. Our tour guide, Tessa, was very knowledgeable, included interesting stories about the lives and times of the Ingalls family and others in Burr Oak in the 1870s, and was personable as she allowed us ample time to look around in an unrushed setting. The previous reviews accurately describe various components of the tour and the grounds. The tour will keep everyone interested; while my wife has been to the De Smet, South Dakota museum for Laura and is more familiar with the details of her life story than I am, I still found it very educational and interesting for my more general level of interest. Our total visit was about 1 hour and 20 minutes.Whether you're an avid fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the "Little House on the Prairie" story or have a more general interest in the time period, the Masters Hotel/Laura Ingalls Wilder Park and Museum is a must-stop.

We visited Burr Oak on our Little House tour, not sure there would be much there. Glad we made the stop! The Ingalls family lived in Burr Oak for about a year and Laura didn't write about it in her books, but the old Masters Hotel where they stayed and worked still stands and has been completely restored. It is a delight to see, and visitors can actually enter all the rooms (ie they're not roped off). I was even allowed to play the old pump organ, which actually works. Our tour guide was excellent and explained the history of the hotel and the Ingalls' family sojourn there. Most of the museum's collection is not originals of the Ingalls' family , but it is from the era and we were amazed at how much there was. They do have original possessions which belonged to the school teacher who taught Laura, and Mary's school records from the College for the Blind. Across the street from the hotel is a small gift shop housed in an old bank building.

This was the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder. She moved there with her family when she was 9 years old and stayed for only a year. The tour lasts about 45 minutes, thee is a small gift shop at the Bank/Post Office across the street. The bank was the original one during the time Laura lived there. It has the bank vault with the safe deposit boxes still intact. This is located about 10 minutes out of Decorah, Iowa.