The Pioneers Who Founded Topeka
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
The Pioneers Who Founded Topeka
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
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 OF
THE PIONEERS WHO FOUNDED TOPEKA/
DECEMBER 5TH 1854
THE SIGNERS OF THE ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT WERE/
(list of signers in 3 columns)
DEDICATED 1931
BY/SHAWNEE COUNTY OLD SETTLERS SOCIETY
JOHN 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.
Sources
Smithsonian American Art Museum Art Inventories Catalog Control Number KS000268. https://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=ariall&source=~!siartinventories&uri=full=3100001~!326522~!0#focus. Accessed July 30, 2019.
Prescott, Cynthia Culver. Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cultural Memory. University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.
Pioneer Monuments in the American West