At the corner of 124th Terrace and Nieman Road in Overland Park, a front lawn has turned into something between a Halloween attraction and a charity drive: more than 370 carved pumpkins, arranged into scenes from Disney, Barbie, Harry Potter and The Goonies, all built by one local dad known around the neighborhood as Dan the Pumpkin Man. The display isn't just for show. Visitors who stop by are encouraged to donate to Harvesters, the regional food bank, and last year alone they gave more than $2,800.
The man behind the lawn is Daniel Taber, who started the tradition back in 2011 when his son was born, according to KCTV5. Taber didn't invent the idea himself — he inherited it from his own father, and he's said he wants to pass it down to his son the same way. As a kid, Taber used simple store-bought pumpkin carving kits; the elaborate, character-filled display he runs today grew from a single carving into the sprawling scene it is now.
A Collection Built to Last, Pumpkin by Pumpkin
Every year, Taber adds roughly 15 to 20 new pieces to the lawn, a pace that explains how a one-pumpkin project in 2011 has ballooned past 370 carvings. Large-scale, multi-year displays like this one are typically made possible by carvable synthetic foam pumpkins, which don't rot the way real gourds do and let carvers build and store expanding collections season after season, according to craft guidance from HalloweenCostumes.com. That durability is likely what allows Taber's yard to keep growing rather than starting over from scratch each fall.
The project has also become a family affair. Taber's son helps set up the yard each year and carves alongside his father, having completed about four or five pumpkins of his own so far. For a $5 donation, visitors can also enter to win a custom carved pumpkin, adding a small incentive on top of the general donations collected for Harvesters.
Turning Pumpkins Into Meals
The money raised goes further than it might seem. Every $1 donated to Harvesters — The Community Food Network allows the food bank to provide two meals to people across its 26-county service region spanning eastern Kansas and western Missouri, according to Harvesters. By that math, the $2,800 collected at Taber's display last year translates into roughly 5,600 meals for families in the region.
That kind of fundraising lands at a moment when local need is steep. In the Kansas City metropolitan area that Harvesters serves, about 1 in 8 residents and 1 in 6 children face the risk of food insecurity, according to annual report data from Renewed Hope Food Pantry. Food insecurity across Missouri and Kansas has surged since the pandemic, with roughly 15 percent of residents in the broader Kansas City region at risk of hunger amid rising food prices and reduced federal meal assistance, Hoodline reported in earlier coverage of Wyandotte County hunger rates. Harvesters runs two major distribution facilities, in Kansas City, Missouri, and Lawrence, Kansas, supplying a network of community partner agencies across northeastern Kansas and northwestern Missouri — meaning donations collected on a residential Overland Park lawn feed directly into a much larger bi-state system.
Part of a Bigger Suburban Tradition
Taber's display isn't the first of its kind in Overland Park. The city has a history of long-running neighborhood Halloween traditions, including a 20-year front-yard haunt on Hadley Street built by resident Kenneth Torres, which grew so large it required a 17-foot U-Haul truck to transport thousands of decorations, including 50 carved jack-o'-lanterns, according to a 2021 report from KCUR. The city also hosts its own citywide fall attractions, including the annual Night of the Living Farm and Pumpkin Hollow events at Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead, per Visit Overland Park.
For now, Taber says he wants to keep the tradition going, and the pumpkins at 124th Terrace and Nieman Road will remain on display through Halloween. With a new batch of 15 to 20 carvings added again this year, the lawn's pumpkin population shows no sign of slowing down — and neither, it seems, does the fundraising for Harvesters.
