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Statue erected on the grounds of the Sherman County courthouse to mark the county's 1987 centennial. Sculpted by Greg Todd. A pioneer man wearing a wide-brimmed hat squats down in his field, holding the rich soil in his proper right hand. Beside him stands his young wife. The wind sweeping the High Plains blows her long skirt and apron. Her right hand rests gently on her husband's shoulder, indicating her reliance on his strength. Her left hand holds tightly to one handle of their prominently featured walking plow. The man's hard work and ingenuity, combined with his wife's nurturing, enable them to survive and thrive on the soil that inspired the town's name of Goodland, Kansas.

They Came to Stay statue

Driving tour of pioneer-themed public monuments in Kansas.  See also tour of pioneer monuments in Kansas City metropolitan area.

Pioneer Monuments in Kansas

In the 1920s, Kansas City joined other prominent western American cities in erecting monuments to pioneers, with a special emphasis on pioneer women who were depicted as mothers who helped convert the wildness of what was viewed as frontier with civilization, stability, and familial values. After World War II, larger cities moved away from this trend while smaller communities in the West, including suburbs, turned to local artists who continued to create monuments to pioneers as part of their effort to claim a unique history. Those local artists increasingly depicted nuclear families rather than solo white women. Residents of Prairie Village, Kansas selected this sculpture of a strong father, a submissive mother, and a young baby, for the town’s new shopping center. Real estate developer J. C. Nichols Co. sponsored a contest at the Kansas City Art Institute for an original sculpture for its new Prairie Village Shopping Center. Six students entered, and Prairiie Village residents voted for their favorite. The winning design was “Homesteaders” by Anna Belle Campbell. It took nearly a year for Campbell and her friend—and later husband—Joe Cartwright to complete the 12-foot-tall statue. It was cast in stone and marble by Ornamental Casterworks in Kansas City. The completed sculpture was dedicated in June 1952. The sculptor knew little about frontier clothing and wagon wheels when she designed the “Homesteaders” statue. But her interest in local history persisted, and she later became the curator at the National Frontier Trails Center in nearby Independence, Missouri. When Highwoods Properties purchased the J. C. Nichols Company in 1999, the statue was donated to the city of Prairie Village. It was placed on a fountain to mark the city’s entrance in 2002.

Dedicated in 1952, this statue was purchased by J. C. Nichols Company and originally placed at the entrance to the Prairie Village Shopping Center as part of an effort to build a connection between the postwar Kansas City suburb and the area's pioneer history. The statue was later moved and placed within a fountain at the entrance to the town in 2002.

The Homesteaders statue

This park was created as a
sesquicentennial project for the town of Shawnee in 2006. It commemorates
Shawnee’s place on the mid-19th-century Santa Fe, Oregon, and
California wagon trails and Fort Leavenworth Military Road. It features two
sculptures by local artist Charles Goslin depicting that history. 

Goslin’s original wagon train
sculpture was reproduced in life size for this park. Most of the work is a stone
relief of covered wagons driven by men and boys. At the front is a freestanding
bronze oxen team. A bronze pioneer mother accompanies the relief.

Near the wagon train installation
stands a limestone and bronze portrait of wagon master Richard “Dick” Williams.
Williams first came to Johnson County in the 1850s as a government surveyor. He
then worked as a “wagonmaster” escorting wagon trains from Kansas City to Santa
Fe, New Mexico, and other destinations in the western United States.

Some Shawnee residents questioned
spending close to $1 million on the 2.2 acre park and stone and bronze
sculptures. The park is a narrow wedge of land in a commercial district that
was once a used car lot.

Park created the town of Shawnee's 150th anniversary in 2006. It commemorates Shawnee’s place on the mid-19th-century Santa Fe, Oregon, and California wagon trails and Fort Leavenworth Military Road. It features two sculptures by local artist Charles Goslin depicting that history.

Pioneer Crossing Park

To mark its 150th
anniversary, the town of Olathe constructed a 10,000-square-foot Heritage
Center to accompany the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop and Farm historic site and erected
a sixty-foot-long bronze stagecoach relief by local artist Kwan Wu.

The sculpture is 60 feet long
and 15 feet tall. It features full scale bronze relief of stagecoach and
passengers against a concrete backdrop. Stand-alone figures of horses, a woman
and young boy emerge from the relief.

Sculptor Kwan Wu was
born, raised, and trained in China. He immigrated to the United States in 1988, settling in the Kansas City area. He became a U.S. citizen in 1997.

The stagecoach sculpture reflects the ethnic diversity of the 19th-century American West. Wu’s stagecoach scene is
far more diverse than most pioneer monuments. Wu relied on historic photographs and photos of reproduction clothing and a stagecoach as he sculpted the scene. Fifteen characters represent men,
women, and children of different ethnicities traveling on the stagecoach. A Latino man and African-American couple sit on the roof of the crowded stagecoach.&nbsp;A Native
American woman and her dog wave farewell to the travelers while birds fly overhead.

The sculpture was funded
by private donations to mark Olathe’s 150th anniversary. It was dedicated
August 14, 2008.

“We wanted to give
something significant that the city could be proud of,” said Marlene Natoli, a
co-chair of Olathe’s Sequicentennial Committee. The sculpture “doesn’t let the
city forget where it came from.”1

The sculpture was
originally planned as part of the construction of a 10,000-square-foot, $3
million Heritage Center next to the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop and Farm. That
plan was set aside when funds ran short. But Wu had already designed the
sculpture, which was taken up by the town’s sesquicentennial committee. Local philanthropist
Maron Moore contributed half of the $400,000 budget. The anniversary committee
raised the other half. 

The artist used local
residents as models. Donor Maron Moore sits in the front window of the
stagecoach. Sesquicentennial Committee co-chair Mike Haskins and Mahaffie employees provided faces for several other characters.&nbsp;

This stagecoach sculpture designed by local Chinese-born artist Kwan Wu, reflects the ethnic diversity of the 19th-century American West. The sculpture was funded by private donations to mark Olathe’s 150th anniversary.

Going West on the Old Santa Fe Trail

Statue of pioneer family marks the junction of the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails. It depicts a man in frontier clothing kneeling in prayer. He holds a Bible in one hand, and his other hand rests on a walking plow. His wife stands beside him with her head bowed in prayer. She cradles their young son in one arm and rests the other hand on her husband's shoulder. This statue became a centerpoint of MidAmerica Nazarene University when erected in the campus Prayer Circle in 1994.

Harvest Prayer statue

This bronze sculpture is dedicated to all of the children whose lives were lost due to the harsh conditions on the overland journeys westward. A pioneer boy, a girl and their dog run through an arch. A rainbow floats above them and doves fly overhead. Rocks in the fountain beneath them represent the streams that children crossed on the overland trail. The sculpture was dedicated on Old Settlers Day, September 7, 2000, by the Johnson County Old Settlers Association.This work was was sculpted by Kansas City artist Kwan Wu. Sculptor Kwan Wu was born and trained in China, but since immigrating to the United States and settling in the Kansas City area he has sculpted two major works depicting the western trails for Olathe, Kansas. The other is "Going West on the Old Santa Fe Trail." Dedication plaque text:Perhaps the greatest test of the pioneers’ spirit was the loss of children like Asa Smith to the harsh and unforgiving elements of the frontier. His tiny marker stands today at the intersection of K-10 and K-7 Highways. It is joined by this sculpture created in loving memory of every child lost along the trails as families faced the unknown, blazing our nation’s westward growth.

This bronze sculpture is dedicated to all of the children whose lives were lost due to the harsh conditions on the overland journeys westward. A pioneer boy, a girl and their dog run through an arch. It was sculpted by Kansas City artist Kwan Wu. Rocks in the fountain beneath them represent the streams that children crossed on the overland trail. Sculptor Kwan Wu was born and trained in China, but since immigrating to the United States and settling in the Kansas City area he has sculpted two major works depicting the western trails for Olathe, Kansas.

Children of the Trails sculpture

Monument to early white pioneers in Kansas. Sculpted by Frederick Hibbard, it depicts a white man working with a shovel. Physician and real estate speculator Simeon Bell purchased this sculpture, originally called "The Corn Planter," at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. He donated it to the University of Kansas in hopes that it would help future generations understand the challenges that early Kansas settlers faced. It remained in storage until 1916, when it became the first work of statuary installed on that campus. It has been moved several times as the campus has changed.

The Pioneer statue

History of Pioneer Women (Memorial Significance)Aside from the statue’s innate beauty and inspirational significance, the Pioneer Women Memorial holds a profound meaning that covers the pioneering mother over the course of the 19th century. After the Louisiana Purchase, and especially after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, many men and their families began settling in the area. According to “Stories From Greenwood Pioneer Women” for the Kansas City Star in 1916, there were very few single men first settling Kansas, and similar to the need for oxen and the prairie schooners, these early settlers wouldn’t have been able to establish themselves in the area without the help of women.For example, a drought ravished the area in 1860 and nearly caused starvation in thousands of settlers throughout the state. One story concerned the Willis family who settled in Greenwood County near Wichita. After building a modest farmhouse outside of Eureka, the family found themselves without food. It was Mrs. Willis who brought pumpkin and melon seeds from Illinois, which yielded the only crop in 1860 and saved her family. In addition to starvation, pioneer families fought against prairie fires, stereotypes regarding attacking Native American tribes, and sickness. In building a suitable farm, women worked side-by-side with their mates to turn the soil, plant the crops, the engage in other chores that were traditionally only suitable for men. While working the earth, the women also cooked, cleaned, made clothes, helped build and maintain the house, gathered water, dealt with rodents and marauding animals, raised and nursed children, canned fruits and vegetables, washed laundry on a rub board, ironed with a heavy cast iron, and conducted many, many other tasks. Lastly, women also became the principal caregivers, treated the sick, set broken bones, amputated limbs, and delivered babies.1 In essence, many single men couldn’t have survived the harsh life of a pioneer without a wife, and thus the Pioneer Women Memorial pays tribute to this essential role of the woman in the establishment of Kansas.  History of the MemorialThe Pioneer Women Memorial was conceived and donated by the Kansas Pioneer Women’s Association. This association consisted of women who came to Kansas as pioneers or as daughters of early settlers. The project began in 1927 with a massive fundraising drive, and anyone who donated a dollar could receive membership. Kansas Pioneer Women's Memorial Association first-vice-chair Lilla Day Monroe initially pursued a Kansas pioneer mother monument out of a belief in women's equality. But that did not mean that the association wanted a sculpture that depicted a woman acting like a man. The male-dominated memorial commission selected Bryant Baker's design featuring a sunbonneted pioneer woman holding a scythe. That design closely resembled Baker's famous Pioneer Woman for Ponca City, Oklahoma. But Kansans did not want their monument to remind viewers that Kansas settler women needed to help their husbands with field labor. They urged the sculptor to replace the scythe with a gun. Baker apparently refused. By 1935, Baker's model was on display in the capitol rotunda, but the memorial association awarded a $10,000 contract for the monument to famed American artist and former Kansan Robert Merrill Gage, instead.In the 1920s and 1930s, Americans often imagined pioneer women holding rifles. Twenty-five public sculptures of pioneer women unaccompanied by men were put up in the US during those decades. Fifteen of those 25 include rifles, including Merrill Gage's 1920 Daughters of Old Westport memorial in the Kansas City area. But none of those pioneer women appear prepared to fire their weapons, even in self-defense. Instead, artists included rifles to emphasize these women's need for protection in the supposedly untamed West.A few protested Gage’s depiction of a “pioneer lady holding a gun,” claiming that their mothers never hunted for game or fought Indians.2 But the Topeka Capital’s editors defended Gage, insisting that pioneer women had to be ready to defend her home if necessary in their husbands’ absence. They believed that nineteenth-century women were supposed to be the moral defenders of the home. While pioneer men struck boldly into the savage wilderness to build new homes and communities, pioneer women were supposed to sit within those rough cabins protecting their civility.The Kansas Pioneer Women’s Association constructed the monument with the help of Merrell Gage, who also built the seated Lincoln statue on the Kansas Capitol grounds. It was dedicated on Mother’s Day on May 11th, 1937.3

Located on the southwest quadrant of the stunning Kansas State Capitol’s grounds, the Pioneer Women Memorial pays an essential tribute to an often overlooked facet of westward expansion in the United States: the woman, mother, and pioneer. 
Women pioneers were central to the success of westward settlement, and without these courageous women, many who held several roles in both traveling caravans and small settlements, newfound communities west of the Mississippi would have encountered eventual destruction and abandonment. 

The sculpture on the capitol grounds features the image of a pioneer woman, who is said to represent the artistic embodiment of all Kansas pioneer women. Aside her on the marble pedestal includes a dog by one of her feet, a pre-teen son by the other foot, a baby cradled in her arm, and a large rifle sitting across her lap. According to the statue’s inscription, the symbolic pioneer mother is too well-fed to be a pioneer woman, but it nonetheless represents the hardships, struggles, and ideals these women met settling into the Kansas territory. 

Sculpted by acclaimed Topeka resident, Robert Merrill Gage, the Pioneer Women Memorial was dedicated on May 11, 1937, the Mother’s Day of that year. 

Pioneer Mother Memorial

A plaque set on footings displays a relief of a pioneer's homestead, with inscriptions above and below it. A log cabin, well, and covered wagon are in the foreground. A male pioneer works a plow nearby. Two trees and a fence are in the background. The plaque is set in front of a boulder. Plaque text:IN MEMORY OFTHE PIONEERS WHO FOUNDED TOPEKA/DECEMBER 5TH 1854THE SIGNERS OF THE ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT WERE/(list of signers in 3 columns)DEDICATED 1931BY/SHAWNEE COUNTY OLD SETTLERS SOCIETYJOHN E DOANE PRES. W.H. CORBETT SECY. Similar bronze relief plaques--typically applied directly to granite boulders--were placed to mark overland trails throughout the American West in the 1920s and 1930s.

1931 relief of a frontier farm, with a log cabin, covered wagon, and a pioneer plowing by unknown artist. Copper or bronze plaque set on iron footings cast by Deggingers Foundry attached to boulder. Dedicated in 1931 by Shawnee County Old Settlers Society. Originally mounted on the archway entrance of the "Old Settlers Memorial Grounds" in Gage Park.

The Pioneers Who Founded Topeka

Located in Gage Park, the Munn Pioneer Memorial commemorates the men, women and children who traveled to Kansas to settle and start a new life. It features a bronze statue of Lillie Gordon Munn and a young man, and a large 45-foot bas-relief carving depicting the "movement of civilizations from east to west." Figures depicted include Native Americans, pioneer families, Spaniards led by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, Buffalo Bill, priests, farmers, cattlemen, scouts, and cattle pulling a wagon. The memorial was created by artist Fred Torrey (1884-1967) in 1939.  

Munn Pioneer Memorial 

<div>In the late 1920s, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) commissioned twelve identical Pioneer Mother monuments in the late 1920s for a dozen states stretching from Maryland to California. In part because there were so many of them spread across the nation, Leimbach’s statues would become arguably the best-known American pioneer mother monuments ever erected. The project began when a group of Missouri women decided to mark the Santa Fe Trail route. In 1911 the National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) set out to mark the “Old Trails Road” stretching from Maryland to California. DAR women worked with the National Old Trails Road Association to mark the old Santa Fe Trail and other western migration routes. In keeping with gender norms of that period, the men of the National Old Trails Road Association “handle[d] the basic and practical side of the question,” while the DAR’s national committee “handle[d] the historic and sentimental side.”<a target="_blank" rel="nofollow">1</a>&nbsp;In 1927, Association president (and future U.S. President) Harry S. Truman and President Coolidge received congressional approval for the creation of a national memorial highway stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Initial plans called for painted mileage markers throughout the route. Inspired by Alice Cooper’s 1905&nbsp;Sacajawea&nbsp;statue for Portland, Oregon, DAR women abandoned mileage markers in favor of 10-foot-tall pioneer mother statues. Twelve identical statues would be placed in the 12 states through which the “Old Trails Road” passed. National DAR Commission chairperson Arlene B. Nichols Moss and her artist son worked with architectural sculptor August Leimbach to design the DAR statues. Sculptor August Leimbach envisioned a scene in which she is looking for her husband whom she believes to be in danger. Each&nbsp;Madonna of the Trail&nbsp;strides purposely westward, dressed in a simple homespun prairie-style gown and wide-brimmed sunbonnet. Like other Pioneer Mother statues erected during the late 1920s, the 12 DAR statues balanced strong, active roles for women with softer maternal symbolism. The statues were cast from algonite (a form of cast stone produced from a mixture of crushed marble, Missouri granite, stone, cement and lead ore) at the cost of $1,000 per statue.&nbsp; The statues were placed along key white migration routes, such as the early-19th-century National Road (later U.S. Route 40) and Santa Fe Trail (later the infamous Route 66). But the precise location of the monument within each state was selected based on both the site’s historical significance and the influence of local DAR and National Old Trails Association chapters. The Kansas statue was dedicated September 7, 1928, in what was considered the most historic town on the Santa Fe Trail through Kansas. In 1825, U.S. commissioners signed treaties with representatives of the Osage and Kaw&nbsp;at Council Grove, granting Americans and Mexicans free passage on the Santa Fe Trail.&nbsp;The monument was placed in the former Santa Fe Camp Ground, which was renamed Madonna Park. In the 1960s, the Kansas Society DAR added a flag pole and cement benches beside the statue. </div>

One of 12 identical statues depicting white pioneer women migrating along 19th-century western trails. Commissioned by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), they were dedicated in 1928-29 in 12 states stretching from Maryland to California.

Madonna of the Trail (Council Grove, Kansas)

This sunbonneted pioneer mother carrying a Bible and satchel and leading her young son by the hand echoes Bryant Baker's famous "Pioneer Woman" for Ponca City, Oklahoma. It was sculpted by Dorothy L. Koelling in 1989, and dedicated on the Wichita riverfront in 1994. According to the dedication plaque, it "symbolizes the hardhip and dreams of early Wichita pioneers." It was given in memory of Eva M. and Will G. Price to recognize "their devotion and inspiration to the cultural and business life of Wichita." The statue stands in front of the civic center, near statues of a Native American man holding a peace pipe, Lebanese immigrant Farris George Jabara, and a group of children at play representing America's future.

Hardship and Dreams statue

This styled nude statue was intended to honor early white
Kansas settler women when it was placed in Wichita amid the nation’s
bicentennial celebration in 1976. The city council commissioned the statue for
a new pocket park under construction behind the former city hall (now the
Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum) and Carnegie library.&nbsp; 

Local artist Richard Bergen described his work as “an
abstracted nude figure of a pioneer woman preparing herself for a cool dip in a
Kansas stream.” Demonstrating more empathy for western settlers than historical
knowledge, Bergen explained that “When you’ve been walking across the plains on
a hot, windy, dusty day and you come to a river … [y]ou’d probably strip off
your clothes and jump in. That’s what I think the pioneers probably did, too.” Although
Heritage Woman was highly stylized,
the artist claimed that “It has a classical feeling to it.”1&nbsp;The Wichita Heritage Square advisory committee unanimously approved the Bergen
sculpture, which the chair called “very effective and just right for the
setting”; the director of Wichita’s Community Arts raved that he “love[d]
it.&nbsp; No question, she is a stunning
person.”2&nbsp;They appeared to embrace the juxtaposition of
a nude figure representing a pioneer woman, and of a hot, dusty settler for a
Victorian-style urban park. Perhaps because the artist chose to name the
sculpture after its site in Heritage Square Park rather than explicitly
identifying the nude figure as a pioneer woman, the broader public seemed to
share the arts community’s appreciation. The citizens of Wichita apparently
viewed Bergen’s Heritage Woman within
a long-established fine arts tradition of nude female forms. &nbsp;In contrast to the outrage expressed in Denton,
Texas, in the 1930s and Salem, Oregon, in the 1950s, newspaper coverage of
Wichita’s Heritage Woman did not
reveal any protests to her nudity.&nbsp;
Instead, local residents appeared to embrace the work’s merging of
classical and contemporary aesthetic for their new Victorian-inspired urban
park, and overlooked the artist’s conception of a nude pioneer woman revealing
herself in downtown Wichita.

Yet
Wichitans’ acceptance of the nude pioneer woman appear to have declined over
time. In April 2005, vandals damaged the sculpture’s hands, requiring $5,000
worth of repairs.&nbsp; Shortly after the city
returned the statue to its plinth in Heritage Park in fall 2006, it was
assaulted a second time, knocking it off its base, breaking it in half at the
waist and cracking the bronze skin, causing another $20,000 in damages. Vandals
attacked it a third time in early 2013, again removing it from its base and
breaking it in half. This time repairs kept the statue out of the public eye
for four years. City leaders hope that the installation of a tall iron fence
around Heritage Park will protect the statue from further damage. Historical
society staff suspect that the statue’s nudity inspired these repeated attacks
on Heritage Woman.&nbsp;<div><div>

</div>

</div>

This styled nude statue was intended to honor early white Kansas settler women when it was placed in Wichita amid the nation’s bicentennial celebration in 1976. Wichitans accepted the statue at that time, but some appear to have become concerned with her nudity. Since 2005 the statue has been seriously vandalized three times.

Heritage Woman statue

Sculpted by Kansas artist Pete Felten, Junior, this 1976 monument commemorates early Volga German settlers in the region. Volga Germans (also known as Russian Germans, Germans-from-Russia, or Volga Russians) were ethnic Germans who were recruited by Catherine the Great of Russia in the 1760s to migrate to the Volga region to develop that region agriculturally. A century later, Alexander II rescinded the privileges that had lured these settlers to the region, and many immigrated to the Great Plains of the United States and Canada to escape military conscription. As other Midwestern towns celebrated ethnic inclusivity during the nation’s Bicentennial in 1976, Felten’s sturdy Volga German immigrant family for Victoria, Kansas, emphasized the Russian Germans’ otherness. The Volga German monument’s dedicatory plaque explains that “the first religious activities of these settlers centered around the village cross.” But Felten depicted the pioneer family as split along gender lines by that village cross: a mustached limestone father, two sons, and a pet dog peer almost angrily at a woman in a headscarf and her two daughters (the younger dragging a rag doll on the ground) from opposite sides of a large wooden cross. Although the monument was a tribute to the families that established the adjacent village of Herzog, Felten’s depiction seemed to suggest that, despite their religiosity and efforts constructing the 1100-seat Cathedral of the Plains, these Catholic Russian Germans could not be easily assimilated into American culture.

Sculpted by Kansas artist Pete Felten, Junior, this 1976 monument commemorates early Volga German settlers in the region. It emphasizes their cultural distinctiveness.

Pioneer Family (Victoria, KS)

This 1971 seven-foot-tall limestone statue by local sculptor Pete Felten, Jr., was created to stand at the Ellis County Historical society's new headquarters at Hays Boot Hill. Also known as "The Homesteader," it stands in the town's first cemetery.Hays, Kansas, sculptor Pete Felten, Junior, made a Yankee pioneer family for Oberlin and a Volga German family for Victoria in the 1970s, but most of his work focused on Hollywood-inspired imagery of the Old West such as frontiersman-turned-entertainer Buffalo Bill Cody. The Ellis County (Kansas) Historical Society commissioned Felten to produce a “dignified and suitable”1 figure of a plainsman, but Felten incorporated Old West mythology to honor those who had died “’with their boots on’ as victims of knife, gun, or rope. In its early days, Hays City had a wild and wicked reputation. Several of those buried at the Boot Hill cemetery were victims of violence connected to alcoholism, mob violence, suicide and shootouts. Boot Hill Man's dedicatory plaque declares that upstanding citizens “have rested here alongside ... murderers, horsethieves, and loose women” since the era of Wild Bill Hickock, Buffalo Bill and Calamity Jane.

This 1971 seven-foot-tall limestone statue by local sculptor Pete Felten, Jr., was created to stand at the Ellis County Historical society's new headquarters at Hays Boot Hill. The historical society sought a dignified sculpture of a plainsman. But Felten wanted the statue to commemorate those who died "with their boots on" as a result of frontier violence. Also known as "The Homesteader," it stands in the town's first cemetery.

Boot Hill Man

This white marble statue of a lone pioneer woman carrying two books was erected on a granite base in the Mount Hope Cemetery in Ellis, Kansas, at the height of the Great Depression in 1933. Her pose and the shawl covering her head and shoulders more closely resembles pioneer mothers by Mormon sculptor Avard Fairbanks than the sturdy women in sunbonnets that were typical of the Pioneer Mother Movement of the 1920s and 1930s.

Pioneer Woman statue (Ellis, KS)

Pete Felten, Junior, produced several frontier-themed monuments for communities near his hometown in western Kansas in the 1970s. This pioneer family for Oberlin, completed in 1971, was the earliest. Felten sculpted a frontier father, mother, daughter, and son, standing in a circle facing outward. Most pioneer family monuments feature a father and mother standing together, with their young son in front of them. In contrast, the Oberlin family stands in a circle with their backs toward one another and their arms linked, a defensive posture suggesting the pioneers’ reliance on the family unit for survival.  The Oberlin pioneer family circle suggests a greater degree of equality among the characters than the pyramidal shape typical in earlier decades. Indeed, the father in the Oberlin family bends his knees to embrace his children, decreasing the extent that he towers over the rest of the family. In keeping with earlier pioneer family monuments, the mother leans gently backward into the family circle, maintaining its core. But in a gesture toward feminism’s growing influence, their teenage daughter leans slightly outward to embrace the future. Their young son bends his knees, mimicking his father’s posture, and appears ready to leap outward at the first opportunity.  Public reactions to Felten’s initial proposal were mixed, but many skeptics apparently agreed with Ira Laidig: “When I first saw it I didn’t like it, but the longer I sit here the better it looks.”1 What initially felt to many rural Kansans like too much of a departure from established pioneer family imagery soon grew more comfortable.

1971 sculpture by local artist Pete Felten, Jr. Local residents were unsure about the sculpture when it was first proposed, but soon grew to like it.

Pioneer Family statue (Oberlin, KS)

Sculpted by Charlie Norton of nearby Leoti, Kansas, this 9-foot-tall bronze pioneer woman statue's dedication was the highlight of Thomas County's centennial celebration on October 8, 1985. The statue was placed in front of the 1906 county courthouse, a Romanesque Revival building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The pioneer woman holds a baby on her hip and waves a handkerchief over her head to signal to someone--likely her husband--far across the Kansas prairie.



Spirit of the Prairie statue

Grain dealer and grower D. K. Baty wanted to commemorate early white settlers in southwestern Kansas. Dozens of cities erected pioneer monuments between World War I and World War II. But by the 1950s, most communities&nbsp;had lost interest in pioneer monuments. Baty's efforts soon stalled. He and his wife eventually hired a local art student to sculpt something. Then for unknown reasons they abandoned the art student and instead had a 30-year-old design by Wheeler Williams cast as a life-sized bronze monument. In 1959, as the Kansas state centennial approached, D. K. Baty and his wife offered to pay Carlos Frey enough to enable him to complete his master’s of fine art at the University of Kansas. Learning about Baty’s project, nationally known sculptor Wheeler Williams “offered his aid and advice to the Liberal artist in this undertaking.”1 Williams would supply far more than advice.The Batys abandoned Frey in favor of resurrecting Wheeler Williams’s Fearless pioneer mother, which he had entered in E. W. Marland’s monument competition for Ponca City, Oklahoma, in the 1920s. In 1927, oilman E. W. Marland wanted a pioneer woman monument for his adopted hometown of Ponca City, Oklahoma. He hired 12 prominent artists to make 3-foot-tall bronze sculptures of pioneer women in sunbonnets. Those bronze models then toured the country, and Marland encouraged viewers to vote for their favorites. Marland turned his favorite, sculpted by Bryant Baker, into a larger-than-life-sized&nbsp;Pioneer Woman for Ponca City. Marland kept the 12 bronze models until financial reverses forced him to sell them. They are now held by the Woolaroc Museum and wildlife preserve in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. <div>Newspaper coverage does not explain why the donors abandoned the young art student in favor of a thirty-year-old Pioneer Mother design. Perhaps they leaped at a chance to acquire a work by a much more famous artist. Or maybe Frey had embraced avant-garde art movements, and his vision did not align with the donors' desire to "glorify the qualities of [Kansas pioneer] heroines which enable them to triumph over the rigors of frontier life."2 The Batys sought to celebrate the qualities portrayed in many 1920s pioneer mother monuments.&nbsp;But Wheeler Williams's&nbsp;Fearless strayed significantly from that trope. The wide-rimmed bonnet on her head evokes a stereotypical Indian brave’s warbonnet as much as it does a white woman’s calico sunbonnet. And even though the skirt of the woman’s long gown is heavily pleated, it clings to her legs in a manner that viewers in both the 1920s and the 1950s would have considered indecent. Williams’s 1920s artistic wedding of classical and cutting-edge depictions of frontier womanhood tested the limits of 1950s decorum.</div>

The design for this statue was originally sculpted by Wheeler Williams in the 1920s. He submitted "Fearless" to a 1920s competition to place a pioneer woman monument in Ponca City, Oklahoma, but did not win. Thirty years later, donor D. K. Baty hired a local art student to design a monument for the town of Liberal. But Baty soon substituted Williams' older design.

Pioneer Monuments in Kansas

They Came to Stay statue

Introduction

Images

Sources

Additional Information