Students and friends of Bethel College announced a museum of natural history and American relics in 1896, and in 1941 the collector Charles J. Kauffman joined his own collections to it and opened it to the public. The present brick building dates from 1983, and its permanent exhibition, Of Land and People, opened in 1987. It follows the Mennonites who came to the central plains from Europe in the 1870s, their encounter with the prairie and the peoples already living on it, and their later work in service and mission around the world.
The museum's most unusual objects are copper. The 1685 edition of the Martyrs Mirror, the book of Anabaptist martyr stories that, after the Bible and the hymnbook, has done most to shape Mennonite and Amish faith, was illustrated with 104 etchings by the Mennonite artist Jan Luyken. The plates were thought lost in the Second World War until 30 surfaced in southern Germany in 1975. After a year of negotiation Robert Kreider of North Newton bought 23 of them on behalf of a group of friends, and they are now held by an inter-Mennonite trust. They are the heart of Mirror of the Martyrs, a traveling exhibition shown here when it is not on the road.
Outside, a 1.5-acre tallgrass prairie planted from 1984 holds more than 15 grasses and 100 wildflowers, and a farmstead keeps buildings from 1875 to 1886 moved in from south central Kansas farms. The grounds are always open.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour