Pa Ingalls builds a clean new house made of sawed lumber beside Plum Creek. The money for materials will come from their first wheat crop, until millions of grasshoppers cover the field and ruin the crop.

The Ingalls family packs up their covered wagon and travels from the big woods of Wisconsin to a new home in Kansas Territory, where wide open land stretches as far as the eye can see. On the prairie, they build a house, meet neighboring Indians, build a well, and fight a prairie fire.