8/5 - Little Falls - Lindbergh House

The day has been pleasantly cool and overcast.  Heavy thunderstorms threatened in late afternoon but ended up going to the east of us so we were spared their winds and possible hail. A tornado took the roofs off two Camp Ripley buildings about a half mile from the campground last August so the camp host made sure to inform us that we were to go to the bath house for shelter if we heard sirens. We're in the middle of a grove of large trees, any one of which could crush an RV if it came down. Tornadoes are not something we ever expected to find in Minnesota.


This afternoon we went to the visitors center in Little Falls which was in a 114-year-old house which originally belonged to friends of C.A. Lindbergh, Charles's father. There were two historic homes behind it which won't be open for tours until Monday but we were able to walk around them.

Two Little Falls historic homes

These two houses were built in the same era as the 1903 visitors center. They are both huge. The Mississippi River runs behind them with a park-like grassy area with a walking path. 

Mississippi River behind the houses

There's a backwater area off the river near these and neighboring houses with very still water, perfect for breeding mosquitoes. We were attacked by hordes of them as we walked along the path so we made a beeline back to the truck. We have rarely had problems with biting insects up here, in spite of the north's reputation for them, so we tend to forget to carry bug spray with us. It doesn't do us much good when left in the truck.

Little Falls' claim to fame is being the boyhood home of Charles Lindbergh so we went to see it and its museum next.

The house Charles Lindbergh considered home

Charles's parents' marriage fell apart after five years so he and his mother lived in this house which had formerly been the family's summer place. For a number of years he had to split his time between living with his mother in Little Falls and his father in Detroit but this is where he wanted to be. (His two sisters, one of whom was a friend of my grandparents in Red Lake Falls, were the children of his father's first marriage which ended with the wife's death in 1898.)

Wood-burning stove in the kitchen

In the house's first few years the only heat came from the kitchen's wood-burning stove. This stove is probably very like the one in my grandmother's kitchen. She used to leave the oven door open so my father could sit on it to get warm when he was a little boy. He was four years older than Charles Lindbergh so the contents of the two houses would have been similar.

Fancy coal-burning heater

Later this ultra-fancy coal-burning heater was installed. It looks worthy of being in the Biltmore House. It's about four feet high.

Today's tour was a special event focusing on how things were in 1917, designed to complement tours going on at the same time in other Minnesota Historical Society locations.

WWI food schedule for wheatless and meatless meals

In 1917, after three years of war and no harvests, Europe was starving. There was rationing in America so tons of food could be saved and sent to Europe. One of the things Americans were doing was following a food schedule for wheatless and meatless meals. Wheat products were not to be eaten at two breakfasts, two lunches and all dinners. No meat was to be eaten at any breakfast. A couple of lunches and dinners were meatless. One lunch and dinner were porkless so which left them with beef for those meals. Up until this time chickens were kept only to lay eggs and weren't eaten for meat. In the effort to cut down on the amount of beef and pork being consumed, chickens started being raised as meat. 

Charles bought an egg incubator at the hardware store, studied it and then built several more himself so he could raise chickens. The dining room was used as the incubator room, being the only available place. The incubators held about 300 eggs each and they each had to be turned every three hours to prevent hot spots from scorching them. In one year Charles managed to raise 6,000 chicks, 1,200 at a time. That's an awful lot of egg-turning every three hours 24 hours a day. At 12 weeks of age the chickens were sold to be canned whole and sent to Europe. That started the business of farming chickens to eat.

Mississippi River from the campground at Camp Ripley

The museum was very interesting. However, in spite of all the information it contained about the Lindberghs, it managed to leave out that, in addition to the six children he had with his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh (to whom he stayed married his entire life), he had another seven children with three mistresses. To say he was unconventional might be an understatement.