I'm sure those who frequent this place have found the last few days' offerings very tedious and perhaps objectionable. Sorry. I get that way sometimes.
So, as an antidote of sorts, I offer this travel piece that I wrote for a motorcycle magazine a few years ago. It's about the Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kans., one of my favorite travel oddities:
You’re headed west on Interstate 70 through Kansas, leaning into a stiff prairie crosswind blowing up from Texas and counting the mile markers to the Colorado line.
Your day started in Independence, Mo., and the rising summer sun warmed your back as you put Kansas City in your mirrors. Somewhere around the Ellsworth exit, you notice you’re 200 miles deep into Kansas and grimace with the realization that there are more than 200 miles to go before you can say goodbye to the Sunflower State.
This would be a good time for a break and, if you’re willing to bend your schedule a little, there’s something amazing just over the northern horizon.
The only clue to the passing rider is a standard-issue interstate point-of-interest sign at the Kans. 232 interchange announcing something called the “Garden of Eden” up the road in Lucas.
The 18-mile ride to Lucas is an eye-opener after hours on the superslab. The two-lane blacktop snakes its way north over undulating hills, topping out at an overlook surveying the 9,000-acre Wilson Lake Reservoir. It doesn’t take long to realize there’s more to Kansas than what you can see from I-70. You may wonder if the Kansans didn’t choose the route to keep the rest of us moving on through. Following the signs, you turn left on Kans. 18, then left again down Lucas’ Main Street. Another left and a jog down a side street and you are face-to-face with S.P. Dinsmoor’s claim to immortality.
Samuel Perry Dinsmoor began life in Ohio in 1843 and served in the Union Army in 18 Civil War battles. He taught school in Illinois after the war, then tried farming in Nebraska. By the time he got to Lucas in 1891, he had a wife of 20 years – a wealthy widow named Frances he married on horseback – and a reputation for quirkiness.
His neighbors’ first clue that Dinsmoor was, shall we say, a little different came in 1907 when, at the age of 64, Dinsmoor built what he called the Cabin Home.
Wood was at a premium on this windswept stretch of the plains, prompting farmers to hack fence posts out of the native limestone that lies just below the sod. It made perfect sense to Dinsmoor, then, to build a “log cabin” of logs hewn from limestone. The 11-room cabin, completed in 1910, is built of brown limestone logs – many of which are 27 feet long – painstakingly fitted together to form walls 22 inches thick.
The Dinsmoors – S.P., Frances and their five children – lived in the basement that included a kitchen, dining room and living area, but they slept on the top floor. The main floor was a showcase for Dinsmoor’s collection of curios and woodworking handicraft. Dinsmoor’s Cabin Home was the first house in Lucas with running water and electric lights.
Frances Dinsmoor died in 1917, leaving her husband lots of money and spare time.
Over the next dozen years, the aging Dinsmoor turned his attention to the space outside his limestone walls.
One of his first projects was a pagoda-like mausoleum in the back yard surmounted by a concrete angel. It was Dinsmoor’s plan to be entombed there with the late Frances, but local authorities denied his request to have her body exhumed from the town cemetery. Undaunted, Dinsmoor dug up Frances’ casket one dark night and transferred her remains to the mausoleum. The cement over her crypt was curing by the time the locals realized what had happened.
With Frances tucked away for Eternity, Dinsmoor set to making concrete his thoughts on religion, philosophy and politics.
Strung around the west and north sides of the property are a panoply of larger-than-life figures, anchored by the images of Adam – wearing a Masonic apron to cover his nakedness and looking suspiciously like his Creator Dinsmoor – and an impossibly wide-hipped Eve. Sons Cain and Abel are just to the north, making offerings to God. Abel is offering a sheep but Cain’s sacrifice is, in the Gospel according to Dinsmoor, a “rotten pumpkin” and Cain is trying to cover a hole in the side with his foot.
The tableau continues with the discovery of Abel’s murder by his wife and his dog. The dog, also a Dinsmoor invention, is the picture of canine horror with its front paws extended and its mouth wide open in a frozen howl of despair. High above the scene, the all-seeing eye of God gazes down from a concrete stalk and, with one slender arm, points accusingly at Cain and his wife who are skedaddling out of town with their belongings in a carpetbag.
Around the corner on the north side of the yard, Dinsmoor gives us his sermon on the way of the world: a worm nibbles a leaf at the end of a concrete branch, oblivious to the bird about to devour him. A cat-like creature stalks the bird, only to be pursued by a dog. From a nearby tree, an Indian aims an arrow at the dog, unaware he is in the sights of a solder’s musket from the next tree to the west.
Over by the mausoleum is “Labor Crucified,” an allegory in which the working man is tormented in his agony by the doctor, the lawyer, the preacher and the banker.
Dinsmoor took time off from his magnificent obsession in 1921 to wed his 20-year-old Czechoslovakian housekeeper. He subsequently wrote, “An old man needs a nurse, a young man wants a companion. I got both.” Although in his 80s, he fathered two children by his second wife.
Dinsmoor died in 1932 at the age of 89. According to his wishes, he was entombed in a glass-topped coffin in the mausoleum with this promise to future visitors: “If I see them dropping a dollar in the hands of the flunky, and I see the dollar, I will give them a smile.”
About 10,000 travelers visit the Garden of Eden annually and many take the $4 tour that includes a chance to search Dinsmoor’s withered face for that promised smile.
The Garden of Eden is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week, from April through October. Hours are from 1 to 4 p.m. from November through March. The phone number is 785-525-6395.
The Garden of Eden has a web site: http://www.garden-of-eden-lucas-kansas.com
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