Rose Wilder Lane on Railroads and the Winter of 1880–1881: Excerpts from “Behind the Headlight: The Life Story of a Railway Engineer”

Nancy Tystad Koupal’s expertise on the Wilder family informs her article, “Rose Wilder Lane on Railroads and the Winter of 1880–1881: Excerpts from ‘Behind the Headlight: The Life Story of a Railway Engineer.’” The article explores Rose Wilder Lane’s early career as a writer. It includes annotated excerpts from a serial that Lane published in the San Francisco Bulletin in 1915, describing a famously harsh winter that would inspire her mother Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “The Long Winter” (1941).