Cindy Wilson will share, through photographs and newspaper quotes, what it was like for those living through the historic Hard Winter of 1880-81, which impacted western Minnesota and eastern Dakota Territory just as new settlers were working to establish new towns and farms.  While this presentation will not focus much on the relationship between
the Hard Winter and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House novel “The Long Winter,” Cindy is the author of the award-winning book “The Beautiful Snow: The Ingalls Family, the Railroads, and the Hard Winter of 1880-81.”

Cindy is passionate about history and enchanted by the prairie landscape, and when not meticulously poring over newspaper archives, she enjoys traveling, delving into architecture (she leads tours at a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home in Iowa), creating art quilts, reading, hiking, biking, or going out to watch storms as a trained weather spotter for the National Weather Service.  Cindy lives in southern Minnesota, and while she spent two years immersed in the Hard Winter of 1880–81, her ideal day is actually eighty degrees with a smidge of humidity.