The Mennonite Settler Statue

In Athletic Park in Newton stands a seventeen foot limestone figure of a bearded farmer, hat in hand, head bowed in prayer. He honors the Mennonites who came to this part of Kansas from the Russian steppes in eighteen seventy four, and the gift they carried with them.

That gift was Turkey Red hard winter wheat. The Mennonites brought the seed in their baggage, and it proved perfectly suited to the dry Kansas plains, helping turn the state into the breadbasket of America. The base of the statue reads, commemorating entry into Kansas from Russia of Turkey Red hard wheat by Mennonites, eighteen seventy four. A Topeka artist named Max Nixon carved it in nineteen forty two from native Kansas limestone, paid for partly by the community and partly by a Depression era federal art project.