Little House on the Prairie (Pilot Movie)

What happens

Before the weekly series there was this two-hour NBC movie. Charles Ingalls sells the family's Wisconsin farm and loads Caroline, Mary, Laura and baby Carrie into a covered wagon bound for open land in Kansas. The trip west is hard on all of them, and the family dog Jack nearly drowns at a river crossing. On the prairie they meet Isaiah Edwards, a rough-talking bachelor who becomes Pa's closest friend, and the two men raise a log cabin together.

Prairie life tests them quickly: a raging fever, a wildfire, and wary encounters with the Osage people whose land the settlers are crowding onto. Just as the little house finally feels like home, word arrives that the government will remove settlers from the territory. Rather than be driven off, Charles packs up the wagon and leads the family out, setting the stage for their move to Walnut Grove, Minnesota.