Real Disaster Inspired The ‘Little House On The Prairie’ Christmas Blizzard Episode

From the start, NBC’s Little House on the Prairie has been rooted in history. Its source material is the Little House book series by the real Laura Ingalls Wilder, recounting her life across much of the American Midwest. One of Little House’s most impactful episodes, “Blizzard,” is likewise rooted in real events; in this case, two very real storms that wracked the Great Plains.

The original Little House on the Prairie aired for nine seasons, from ‘74 to ‘83, deriving inspiration from Laura’s upbringing in the mid-to-late 1800s. The show had several episodes themed around holidays while also drawing from real, historical happenings, and season three’s “Blizzard” is one of the most emotional unions of these two plot devices.

Season three’s “Blizzard” shows Walnut Grove facing dire odds on the eve of Christmas

Little House on the Prairie actually had just a small handful of episodes dealing with Christmas, specifically, and probably the most enduring one remains “Blizzard.” It originally aired on December 27, 1976 as the 11th episode of that season and the final of that year. When a dangerous snowstorm bore down on Walnut Grove just before Christmas vacation, Miss Beadle dismissed the children from classes early, fearing they’d be stranded at the schoolhouse.

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However, this option still came with risks and many children found themselves unable to make it home on their own, prompting to the men of Walnut Grove to organize a rescue effort.

“Blizzard” pulled no punches and infamously saw one family living through a nightmare just before the holidays, when they should have been abundant in joy. One of the would-be rescuers, Ted McGinnis, played by John Carter, charged out to find his son with neither a level head nor adequate clothing. He did not know his son had actually made it to safety as he fruitlessly searched through the storm, only to succumb to hypothermia. The reunions take on a bittersweet air and it is Charles Ingalls, played by Michael Landon, who ascends the pulpit and reads the Nativity story from the Gospel of Luke, reminding Walnut Grove about the meaning of Christmas.

A real blizzard closely resembles what happened on ‘Little House on the Prairie’

The year was 1888 and the Great Plains were about to endure one of the most infamous natural disasters of the age. Actually, two major snowstorms impacted America that year. The first occurred on January 12 and 13 and was called the Schoolhouse Blizzard or the Children’s Blizzard.

The National Weather Service reports that the Children’s Blizzard was tragically named that because “so many children died trying to go home from school, [and it] was one of the deadliest winter storms in the upper Midwest.” Towns ended up completely isolated from important resources just as temperatures dropped below zero and other means of communication were knocked out. Reports of casualties continued to pour in up to eight days after the original storm.

The other blizzard took place along the east coast, still in 1888, and lasted from March 11 to March 14. The two of them combined to have a total death count of around 600.

What other episodes do you know that are rooted in history?