1 post tagged “davis memorial hiawatha kansas”
The Davis Memorial at Mt.Hope Cemetery, in Hiawatha Kansas, was erected by John M. Davis as a memory to his wife Sarah E. Davis. She passed away in 1930. John had Italian marble, life size statues of he and Sarah made and erected around the grave site. The statues are at various stages of their lives.
In the 1930's during the depression, this was no small feat and costly at 200,000 dollars. By today's standard it would be well over a million dollars. A 52 ton canopy (weighing over 50 tons) was first erected on stone pillars around the her grave and in 1932 the first marble statues arrived. There are 11 total marble and granite statues.
This memorial has been featured in Newsweek, Life, People magazine and on Ripleey's Believe It or Not. The brochere says the sites has 20-30,000 visitors a year. I found the site very interesting and the fact he spent 200 thousand dollars during the depression instead of helping others is something else. That money could have fed a lot of people. But it is waht it is and now it's an attraction. If you are in the area, stop by and check it out for yourself.
