M.T. Liggett Roadside Art

M.T. Liggett was a Mullinville native who spent his life around the town and its farms and who, in his later years, took up welding scrap metal into sculpture with a passion that never let up. He was famously opinionated, independent, and unafraid to offend, and he found in welded steel the perfect medium for a running public commentary on everything that crossed his mind.

He planted his creations in the ground along the highway at the edge of town, where every passing car would see them, turning the roadside into his personal gallery and soapbox. Over the years the collection grew into hundreds of pieces, and Liggett became a local legend, known for greeting curious visitors and for never softening his views.

The sculptures take many forms. Some are tall totems topped with painted metal faces, often caricatures of politicians and public figures, labeled with pointed slogans. Others are elaborate whirligigs, kinetic pieces with blades and arms that spin and clatter in the wind, so that on a breezy day the whole roadside comes alive with motion and sound.

The subjects range across politics, history, and Liggett's own life and grievances, from national figures to local ones, from tributes to loved ones to savage mockery of those he disliked. The tone is blunt and unfiltered, and that rawness is exactly the point. This is folk art as free speech, a farmer's unedited opinions set permanently in steel beside a Kansas highway.

Liggett's roadside gallery belongs to a rich Kansas tradition of grassroots art, self-taught visionaries who built astonishing environments out of ordinary materials, from the concrete Garden of Eden at Lucas to countless smaller roadside wonders across the state. What these creators share is a fierce individualism and a determination to make something lasting and personal.

Since Liggett's passing, the collection has been recognized and cared for as an important work of that grassroots tradition, ensuring that his sprawling metal commentary endures. Visitors continue to stop along the highway to walk the line of totems, read the slogans, and watch the whirligigs turn, keeping the artist's voice alive.

Mullinville is a small farming town in south-central Kansas, in the broad wheat and cattle country where the plains begin to break into the red buttes and gypsum-capped hills to the south. This was long the country of Plains nations including the Kiowa, Comanche, and Osage, who hunted the grasslands, and whose peoples continue today, most now centered in Oklahoma.

The roadside art pairs naturally with the region's other wonders, from the grand Fromme-Birney Round Barn just to the south to the Big Well at Greensburg to the west. Spring and fall bring the mildest weather for a slow drive through the country, and a breezy day sets the whirligigs spinning at their liveliest.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.