Mariadahl, the Valley of Mary

This steeple marks Mariadahl, one of the oldest Swedish settlements in Kansas. The name means Valley of Mary, chosen by a founder in memory of his mother. Swedish immigrants organized a Lutheran congregation here in eighteen sixty-three, one of the first Lutheran churches established by Swedes west of the Missouri River.

Mariadahl sat at the heart of a belt of Swedish settlements stretching across Clay, Riley, and Pottawatomie Counties. The community's lasting legacy was its Children's Home, a Swedish Lutheran orphanage that opened in the eighteen eighties and cared for hundreds of children over many decades. Today the town itself is mostly gone, its valley partly drawn into the world of Tuttle Creek Lake, but the steeple still stands as a marker of the faith and the language those first families carried across an ocean and a continent to plant here on the prairie.