ALS signed “Charles A. Lindbergh,” four pages, 6 x 8, personal Long Barn letterhead, October 30, 1936. Handwritten letter to friend Martin Engstrom, in full: "Your letter makes me homesick for Minnesota and the fall days which are nowhere as beautiful as in a country of cold winters. Seasons have never meant as much to me as they did during the years I lived in Minnesota. Dr. Nute, of the Minnesota Historical Society, sent me a number of pictures she took when you showed her over the property. I think you and everyone responsible for the work are to be congratulated on the simplicity and taste which are shown in the pictures. I hope similar discretion will always be used in projects connected with the old farm, and I am sure it will be, as long as you take part in the plans which are made.
The planting of the trees which you mention in your letter should be a great improvement and should add materially to the beauty of the property after they have had a few years to grow. I shall look forward with great interest to seeing the place again because you have apparently done a great many things since I was there.
You ask if I have any suggestions. I am especially interested in two policies in connection with the park. First, that the property be left in a simple and natural condition. Second, that the fact of it’s being named after my father be not lost by bringing out too prominently incidents connected with my own life. One other thing — I hope the property is always handled in a way which will permit people from Little Falls and the nearby country to obtain real pleasure from going there. It should be a place where families can go on Saturday and Sunday and where children can enjoy playing in the creek and river. I know that you are in full accord with me in all of these policies, and that there is really little need for me to mention them again.” In very fine condition.
After the highly publicized kidnapping of their son, Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow, found respite and privacy when, in 1936, they rented the Long Barn house, located in the English village of Sevenoaks Weald, Kent. Their second child, Jon, is remembered by the villagers as being watched over by an armed bodyguard while playing on the grounds.
When the Lindbergh family donated its 110-acre farm to the state of Minnesota in 1931, a state park was created in Congressman C. A. Lindbergh’s honor. Little attention was given to the development of the park until 1936 when it became a local project for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). In addition to repairing the Lindbergh home, other structures — buildings and bridges, trails, trail shelters, and parking lots — were constructed by the WPA on the former Lindbergh farm.
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