Garden of Eden

Location:  From Hwy K-18 at Lucas, follow signs to the south edge of town

Town:  Lucas

Contact:  Ph. 785/525-6288

This is one of the oddest and most interesting stops on the Kansas Photo Tour.  It really is a must see in Kansas.  It was constructed by S. P. Dinsmoor, an Ohio native who was a Civil War Veteran, having served for the Union as a medical aid.  After the war, he tried his hand at school teaching and farming.   He finally settled in Lucas, and 1907 started building his log cabin--out of stone logs--since there were few trees in the area.  The stone is from the same formation from which the stone fence posts of the area were quarried.  For 22 years he toiled on his concrete sculptures depicting a mix of Old Testament Bible readings and Populist political themes.  In the process he used over 113 tons of cement.

This is a concrete flag, mounted on ball bearings so it moves with the wind just like a cloth flag.  Dinsmoor believed that all public buildings should have concrete flags since they are much more durable than cloth.  All of the concrete was cast in place using scaffolding over 2 stories high.   The round poles are steel pipes with the concrete cast around them.  Wires ran through the pipes to lights on many of the sculptures.  He used chicken wire, barbwire, and other steel objects as reinforcement for the concrete which was cast by hand into the shapes you see today.

Dinsmoor is said to have read the Bible three times by the age of 16.  Much of the sculpture has religious overtones.   The display along the west edge of the property is based on the Book of Genesis with Dinsmoor taking a little artistic license here and there.  Up until just a few years before his death, he conducted tours of the garden.  Also, he had a megaphone of sorts rigged up to one of the posts in the garden so he could shout at passersby from inside of the house.

On the east edge of the property is the "Cross of Labor".  It shows labor in the middle being crucified by the Doctor, the Preacher, the Banker, and the Lawyer.  This view is from the back porch, which was made of-- you guessed it--concrete.

Here is the final resting place of S. P. Dinsmoor, and his first wife.  As part of the tour you may peer into his glass coffin and see his moldering remains.  After the death of his first wife in 1917, he married the 20 year old Emilie Brozek in 1924, and fathered two more children, even though he was in his eighties at the time.  Dinsmoor definitely marched to the beat of a different and distant drummer that only he could hear.  But consider how many people search all their lives for a Garden of Eden on this earth  and never find it.  By mixing politics, religion and cement, Mr. Dinsmoor constructed his own version of Eden and in the process left an amazing treasure for future generations.

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