Welcome to our fair city
Tens of thousands of visitors are expected to come from across the nation Saturday for the 37th annual Hillsboro Arts and Crafts Fair.
To you we say, welcome! And we hope you enjoy your "once a year day" in our fair city.
We hope you'll discover what our 3,000 residents already know about Hillsboro: that this is indeed a special place to live, a community with its roots planted deep in fertile soil.
Here in the early 1870s immigrant refugee Mennonites came from south Russia
and central Poland, escaping persecution.
They brought with them seeds of hope and seeds of red winter wheat, which was destined to become the crop for which Kansas is known.
The town of Hillsboro was built as a railroad center for shipping wheat to market. The city grew and prospered.
Hillsboro is nestled among three famous trails. Pioneers traveled the Gnadenau Trail to settle the area in 1874.
During the 1860s-70s, ranchers drove cattle from Texas up the Chisholm Trail just west of Hillsboro to Abilene.
Throughout the 1800s, merchants drove supplies west along the Santa Fe Trail north and west of Hillsboro, which is located on the Auto Tour Route of the trail.
Today Hillsboro has a statewide reputation as a most progressive community. It rises above the rolling prairie of central Kansas as a monument to the labor and vision of those who went before.
Before you leave town, take a second look around, and realize that most of what you see here was built by descendants of true pioneers.
As you walk our streets, purchase our goods, and sample the rich flavors of our hospitality, we hope you'll take a moment to appreciate that that everything we are as a city, and as a people in community, we owe to the men and women who came before us, bearing seeds.
Welcome to our fair city!
— GRANT OVERSTAKE
