Delavan Pioneers statue

Sculpture also known as Land is Our Heritage. Sculpted by Minnesota artist and "Renaissance Man" George Bassett. Installed to mark the Delavan, Minnesota, town centennial in 1977. It is similar to other town and county centennial monuments erected in the 1970s-1990s in the Upper Midwest and Great Plains.

This statue is also known as Land is Our Heritage. It was sculpted by George Bassett (1925-2023) for the Delavan, Minnesota, town centennial in 1977.

Pioneer monuments became a common way towns in the Upper Midwest and Great Plains to mark their communities' centennials in the late 20th century. Bassett utilized imagery that was common to many of these pioneer monuments. The man wears a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, work trousers and suspenders, and holds a wide-brimmed hat in his proper right hand. The woman wears a long dress with the sleeves rolled up and an apron that she holds back with her proper left hand. Field stone lines the monument's base. Such decoration also appears on centennial monuments erected in eastern Montana a few years later.

George Bassett was known in Minnesota as a "Renaissance Man." Bassett began his art training while serving in the US Air Force, stationed in Italy from 1944-46. Upon his return to the United States, he worked as a teacher, farmer, scientist, architect and painter, but expressed himself most powerfully in bronze sculpture.

The monument was installed in 1977 with a time capsule to be opened during Delavan's sesquicentennial in 2027.

George Bassett, Accessed July 1st, 2024. https://www.pattonfh.com/obituaries/george-bassett.

Pioneer Monuments in the American West. Accessed July 1st, 2024. https://pioneermonuments.net/.

Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS). Delavan Pioneers, (sculpture)., Art Inventories Catalog. Accessed July 1st, 2024. https://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~!333115!0.

"Where is Blue Earth’s bronze beauty?." Faribault County Register August 23rd, 2008. .