What’s New: With all the improvements of late in our city park it might be time to revisit our history: A Brief History of the Summerfield Park by Lydia Marie Jones and Harriet Wright.

Welcome to the Summerfield Kansas website. We appreciate the opportunity to share some information about our community.

Summerfield is situated in a very pretty part of the country. We are surrounded by gently rolling hills covered with corn, soybeans, wheat, pastures, hay fields, and woodlands. Summerfield is rural but there are 3 million people living within a 2.5 hour drive. Summerfield is as far north in Kansas as you can get with Nebraska visible from the back porch. If you imagine a not quite circular spoked wheel with Omaha, Lincoln, Topeka, Kansas City, and St. Joseph along the rim, Summerfield would be at the hub. Many people travel to Lincoln for nights on the town, college sporting events, concerts, big box shopping, and access to major hospitals since Lincoln is the closest part of the rim at 77 miles.

We are less than 50 miles from Missouri as a crow flies so we are far enough east that we generally have plentiful rains. We have a 4 season climate but the winters are often mild and temperatures above 100 happen only once or twice every summer if at all. Recreation is often outdoor centered. Hunting and fishing are popular with many record whitetail deer being taken in our area. Boating and jet skiing are popular at several large reservoirs. There are four golf courses within 25 minutes. Our city park has a brand new basketball court, a tennis court, and a sand volleyball pit.

Our town is privileged to have a regionally popular restaurant, the Border Bar & Grill, a beautiful city park with an upcoming $150K playground upgrade, a tower farm whose fresh produce is sold at the farm and in area grocery stores and restaurants, a community center, a bank with a 24 hour accessible ATM, a post office, a 24 hour gas station, a manufactured home factory, a service station with a full time mechanic, a plumber, several carpenters, a pest control business, a farm supply store, a thrift store, Good Shepherd Village transitional housing, and our newest venture, Transition Plus, a 501(c)(3) non profit education and training center for veterans. In the near future the tower farm will expand its operation to include a commercial greenhouse to provide year round produce and possible flower production.

Our community is made up of friendly, decent, hard-working people. We like the slower pace of life. Our mornings often begin with discussions of current events over a cup of coffee with friends and neighbors. A partial list of excuses to get together for scheduled activities include: fish fries, sand volleyball tournaments, chicken BBQ, soup suppers, community breakfasts, tractor pulls, and little league baseball games. While many of us are long term residents, we’ve had new arrivals from Illinois, Iowa, California, and many other states. There is housing to rent or buy so if someone is thinking of transitioning to a less stressful lifestyle please check us out. Commercial space and lots with all hookups to city utilities are available now. There are abundant employment opportunities in our area in all sectors of the economy.

The economy of Summerfield is agriculture based. Those that don’t till the soil are often providing services to those that do. An excellent airport with a 4200 foot runway is a 25 minute drive away in Marysville, Kansas. Our community is blessed to have excellent access to the internet with broadband rates up to 1GB/second. That means quick updates on the grain markets and keeping the whole family happy when everyone needs to be on the internet at once. Summerfield is in the highly ranked USD 113 School District. There are several colleges within an hour’s drive of Summerfield and a Walmarks Supercenter is a 20 minute drive.

Summerfield has a low cost of living. The last two homes sold for less than $70,000. Our electricity costs 10.8 cents/kilowatt-hour compared to the nationwide average rate of 13.85 cents/kilowatt-hour. Our property taxes are very reasonable. Crime is almost non-existent in our community. A child daycare center is on the horizon for Summerfield. There are three churches within the city limits of Summerfield and one church a few miles outside of town.

Like most small towns in America, Summerfield has its fair share of senior citizens. In Summerfield, neighbors look after neighbors. Traffic is very light in our area and driving is easy compared to navigating the streets of a large city. A hospital and medical clinic is 15 minutes by car with three hospitals within 30 minutes. A county health nurse is in town several times a week and the health department operates a monthly clinic at the Summerfield Community Center. The county operates a transit bus on a regular basis with destinations as far away as Lincoln and Topeka. Our library is soon to be relaunched into a more spacious setting that will be shared with the new Senior Center. It will have public access computers and free WiFi. The seniors get together for lunch at the Border Bar & Grill most days. Summerfield has an active chapter of the Red Hat Society.

For as long as Summerfield has been around, its young men have rallied to the defense of their country. Our town and its cemeteries are home to veterans going back to the Civil War. Our veterans have continued to serve their country long after their enlistment is over. Our veterans came back after the wars were over and started some of the small businesses that keep Summerfield going even today. Today our veterans and their spouses serve their country through the local VFW and the American Legion and American Legion Auxiliary. The latter group recently established an Avenue of Flags in our cemeteries.

Several years ago some people in our community came to the realization that many of our elderly neighbors were having difficulty living on their own. Good Shepherd Home was established to alleviate this problem. Through the years, the focus has shifted to housing veterans who fell on hard times. Over 40 veterans have made their home in Good Shepherd with several becoming home owners in Summerfield. Over the years the building has housed Americorps Vista Volunteers on two separate occasions. In the future there are plans to re-purpose the facility into an independent living center that can also serve as housing for Transition Plus trainees and staff.

If you’ve never visited our small town we hope you will keep us in mind. Please explore our website for more information about Summerfield. If you have any questions, please visit our Contact Us page. We look forward to hearing from you.