The Garden of Eden
Don Coldsmith, Syndicated Columnist
Monday, November 10, 2008
A FEW years back, we took a trip across the back roads of Kansas; one of our stops was the Garden of Eden at Lucas. We’d heard about it for years, but just never had the opportunity before to turn off the beaten path for a look.
This is one that’s hard to describe. In 1907, Samuel P. Dinsmoor, Civil War veteran, moved from Ohio to Lucas and began his astonishing project. He was 64 and wanted to build what he called a Cabin Home on the frontier. He had in mind a log cabin, but was hindered by a factor he had not considered: There were no logs on the Kansas prairie.
Undaunted, Mr. Dinsmoor noted that in that country, fence posts were of stone. He would build his cabin of the same material. Not just stone, but stone LOGS. He rigged his wagon to haul the posts, some 20 feet long, from the sandstone quarry to his building site, in a sling beneath the wagon. He actually notched the ends like logs and built the house, which is still sturdy and sound, without a crack. The “cabin” has 11 rooms, on three levels, with plastered walls and conventional hardwood trim inside.
Behind the house, he built a mausoleum of the same stone posts, to be the resting place for himself and his wife, Frances. They had been married on horseback in 1870 and raised five children.
On the very top of the mausoleum was a concrete American flag, which rotated as a weathervane. Its weight was counter-balanced by a concrete turkey. Dinsmoor agreed with Ben Franklin that the turkey, not the eagle, should be the national symbol. The flag and turkey have now been removed to the lawn. The metal swivel was rusting and becoming a threat to visitors below.
It’s unsure when he began the construction of the Garden of Eden, which can best be described as concrete yard on a gigantic scale. The first figures were of Adam and Eve, the serpent, and a concrete apple tree some 30 feet high. It’s said that the community rebelled somewhat over Adam’s nakedness, so Mr. Dinsmoor, a member of the Masonic Lodge, added a concrete Mason’s apron, in lieu of a fig leaf.
It’s worth noting that although Dinsmoor wasn’t much of an artist, he was a fine workman and craftsman. His reinforced concrete projects are still in pretty good shape after nearly a century.
From there, he added other scenes from scripture, although not exactly as usually translated. I don’t recall, for instance, the description of Abel’s death in which the body is discovered by Abel’s wife and his shepherd dog. The wife and the dog have exactly the same expression on their concrete faces. (A shepherd dog? “Of course,” Mr. Dinsmoor insisted. “He was a shepherd, wasn’t he? He must have had a dog!”)
Another scene shows the banishment of Adam and Eve from the garden, an angel with spread wings and Satan’s glee. All of these and other scenes are high overhead in the concrete trees. There are more than two dozen trees, mostly about 30 feet tall.
At the corner of the block, the concrete scenery changes from religious to political. Dinsmoor was a member of the Populist party. Frankly, the meaning of some of his concrete political cartoons is lost on most people, I think. However, his last work of art, the Crucifixion of Labor, has a meaning that’s plain. The laboring man is being impaled by four torturers, who are labeled for sure identification: Politician, Doctor, Lawyer, Banker. He was not quite able to finish this scene before the loss of his eyesight, about 1929.
But along the way Dinsmoor did some other remarkable things, too. He was a skilled woodworker. In the house are several pieces of his furniture, including tables with intricately inlaid tops.
It’s hard to see how this man, after retirement age, could have accomplished all of this. There were 113 tons of concrete, (2,273 sacks), all hand mixed, besides the stone house.
Maybe an even greater accomplishment, though, is that in 1924, at the age of 81, he married again, a 20-year-old woman, and fathered two more children.
See you down the road.
Author and columnist Don Coldsmith lives in Emporia.
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Posted by kseyetie (anonymous) on November 11, 2008 at 10:02 a.m. (Suggest removal)
This place is waaaaaaay cool; check it out sometime.
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