A long-running drama based upon the "Little House" series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, "Little House on the Prairie" follows the lives of the simple, farming Ingalls family: Charles, Caroline, Mary, Laura, Carrie and then Grace and the later adopted Albert, James and Cassandra, who settle into a quaint little house on the banks of Plum Creek near the small town of Walnut Grove during the late 1800s. Often narrated by Laura, the series follows her simple farm upbringing from her childhood until her adulthood with Almanzo Wilder with whom she starts a family of her own. While the series is based upon the Little House books (and thus the real life of author Laura Ingalls Wilder), it is a very loose adaptation, with mostly only key events and elements of fact surviving the transition from book to TV series, the most important being Mary's eventual blindness, and Laura's future. Several other fictitious (some factual) characters make up the friendly community of Walnut Grove, including teacher Miss Beadle (succeeded by two other teachers, then Laura, then Etta Plum), Dr. Hiram Baker, Rev. Robert Alden, Mr. Hanson (of the Hanson lumber mill), and the well-to-do Olesons, owners of the local mercantile, and also the primary rivals of the Ingalls family (except the Oleson patriarch). Family friends include the Edwards family, the Garvey family and the Carters, who, in the final season, move into the Ingalls' little house.

In the "The Last Farewell", they really did blow up the town. Producer/star Michael Landon didn't want the bulldozers to crush the buildings. So he wrote a story which gave the inhabitants the chance to destroy their town themselves. They did not however destroy the home that the Ingalls had lived in. That was destroyed by the fires in California in late 2003.

Laura:
I should've kicked her in the face! I should've scratched out her eyes!

Continuity: In the episode "Christmas at Plum Creek", Laura's horse Bunny is referred to as being male. However, in the episodes "Bunny", "The Race" and "Journey in the Spring", the same horse is always referred to as being female.