'Little House on the Prairie' cabin in need of makeover

The cabin is drooping and logs are deteriorating at the site where, in 1869, Ma, Pa, Laura, Mary and baby Carrie Ingalls settled near Independence in the southeastern corner of Kansas. The Ingalls family came to Kansas inspired by the Homestead Act of 1862, which offered 160 acres of "free land" to settlers who would farm and live on it for a few years - and coincidentally because Pa's cousin, John J. Ingalls, had gone to Kansas and was a U.S. senator.