“ . . . when I was building [the Garden of Eden] they accused me of being bughouse on religion. I am bughouse good and proper, but not on religion, perpetual motion, or any other fool thing that I cannot find out one thing about.” From Pictorial History of The Cabin Home in Garden of Eden by S. P. Dinsmoor
The Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas is full of quirky goodness. I first toured it more than thirty-five years ago, and have remembered and talked about it since, so it seemed like a good idea for me, my son,and my parents to take a road trip. I even took my camera – which hasn’t been used in several years. (We are not a memorializing family – a few photos, no scrapbooking, so if the collecting of 30 odd years worth of plastic butter tubs doesn’t count, we are not very outwardly nostalgic.) So the photos are just so-so, but the trip was a treat.
This is Lucas, a small Kansas town, 40 miles west of Salina, and another 15 miles north and west around Lake Wilson.
Samuel P. Dinsmoor, a civil war veteran, a former teacher and farmer, built an eleven room cabin there, after he retired. The logs are made of limestone.
No two windows or doors are the same size, and a lot of the interior woodwork is Dinsmoor’s:
After he finished the house, he created a sculpture garden around it.
Here’s Eden, Eve with an apple and the serpent leaning over her, Adam stepping on the snake he’s holding. The little head over the N in the sign is the devil. Some of the trees you see are made of concrete; some are live.
On the platform below, Abel dies, while his wife grieves and an angel – with an eye of God above her -- watches and points. At the corner, Cain’s wife, with suitcase, is escaping.
In the far right in the next picture, Cain – who you really can’t see well –sorry!—carries a hoe and a dead possum for lunch.
In the middle of the picture, under the American flag with a turkey – Dinsmoor agreed with Franklin that the turkey should be the national bird --a “trust” has its tentacles into everything. Think Monopoly or corporate conglomerate. According to Dinsmoor, “the flag protects capital today better than it does humanity.” At any rate, one of its claws reaches into a soldier’s backpack, another grabs a kid, another holds bonds and another a sack of interest. One tentacle wraps around a woman who is chasing a soldier. The soldier is aiming at an Indian—not in the picture -- in the next tree. The Indian is shooting at a dog who is after a fox, who is stalking a bird eating a worm eating a leaf. As for his depiction of the world, Dinsmoor says “If it is not right I am to blame, but if the Garden of Eden is not right Moses is to blame. He wrote it up and I built it.”
Dinsmoor gives us his ideal version too -- on the far side of the garden gate we have Liberty spearing the trusts while a man and woman with the ballot are sawing off the limbs.
On the back of the lot – opposite Adam and Eve, Labor is crucified, surrounded by accusers: a doctor, a lawyer, a preacher, and a banker.
Several of the accusers remain unfinished. And, as Dinsmoor died in 1932, he won’t be finishing them anytime soon, although he still contributes to the garden. The price of admission gets you entrance into his mausoleum, where he is mouldering in a concrete casket. No pictures are allowed inside, but here is the outside, a step pyramid, just beyond the pyramid of flowerbeds.
Here’s a closer view of the entrance to the mausoleum—with the concrete flag in front. Dinsmoor attached a number of concrete flags to his sculptures and argued that they wear better than cloth and the government might follow suit. These flags are atop ball bearings, so they can move in the wind (supposedly), but the flag in this picture was removed from the top of the mausoleum, because it might have been hazardous, had it fallen. It’s adorned with the turkey, like other flags in the garden.
For those who’d like to see some better pictures than mine, here’s one website, although there are others too:
http://www.garden-of-eden-lucas-kansas.com
As if Dinsmoor were contagious, Florence Deeble, a neighbor in Lucas, felt impelled to follow his lead by creating a concrete miniature Mt. Rushmore (with other scenes) in her backyard.
I understand her impulse. Visiting the Garden of Eden, I want to go build my own mud sculptures in my backyard, or become an expert on fungi, or dive for treasures in the South Pacific, or in some other way express myself and tap into that great flow of creativity that keeps us buoyant here on earth. Amy says go for the sculptures. She wants to build monuments in her backyard too. I have no chosen subject yet, as mine will look like a blob whatever I intend, but since Amy can really sculpt, she'll have to think about it.
Dinsmoor wanted to bury his first wife in the mausoleum in his yard, but when the city fathers refused him and made him place her in the cemetery, he dug her up in the middle of the night, brought her home, encased her in concrete in the mausoleum and there she is forever after. Or so the story goes. Legends are made of less than this.
At 81, Dinsmoor married his second wife. She was 20 and together they had two children. His son is the youngest surviving child of a Civil War Veteran.
The devil is in the details, and in this place, that's a literal statement too. While God is everywhere represented by All-Seeing Eyes and pointing hands, Dinsmoor bemoans that "these are the only things that I know of that we have to represent Deity. The heathen beat us on ideals. They have got more of a variety and better lookers." But he has no such trouble with the Devil. Dinsmoor got electricity to his property early and lit up his sculptures, so people on the passing trains could view his property at night. While there are bulbs in various spots in the garden -- a snake's mouth, I think, for one -- the devil is lit from within. And I imagine some one-time passenger in the 1920's, maybe a flapper, maybe a farmer, traveling by and being astonished at the phantasm arising out the window, a light on a hill, a beacon on the prairie.
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