I'm Mr. Beat
I'm in Lucas, Kansas, standing in front of the homes of one of the most interesting people in American history
that you have not heard of
Samuel Dinsmoor
So, you may have not heard about Samuel P. Dinsmoor, but his story is about as Americana as it gets.
Dinsmoor was born near Coolville, Ohio, on March 8, 1843.
His youth abruptly ended after enthusiastically signing up for the Union Army after the Civil War began.
Standing at just five-foot five inches, fellow soldiers nicknamed him “Little One.”
He later claimed to be involved in 18 big battles during his three years in the war.
He spent much of his service as a nurse, likely assisting in amputations and often witnessing horrifying deaths.
Incredibly, Dinsmoor made it through the war with no major injuries.
However, just a few days after the war was over, a commander’s horse he was riding threw him off, slicing his head open.
Always abstaining from alcohol, he refused to sip liquor as doctors stitched his head up.
He then returned home to Ohio and soon moved west to the Mississippi River, settling on the Illinois side just north of St. Louis.
In 1869, he began a brief career as a schoolteacher.
During this time, he fell in love with a woman four years older than him named Frances Barlow Journey.
They married on August 24, 1870.
The two exchanged vows on horseback in a stream bed, and yes, the presiding minister was also on a horse.
After the wedding, Dinsmoor quit teaching to farm, helping run a 341-acre property near the river that Frances had inherited after her first husband died.
Frances and Dinsmoor managed one of the highest valued farms in the area.
For 18 years, the family grew and lived a peaceful life.
Yet, when Dinsmoor was 45 years old, he decided to move the family west to Kansas, leaving their prosperous and comfortable life back in Illinois behind.
It’s not clear why he decided to do this, but some speculate it was because of how promoters hyped Kansas up.
By the time Dinsmoor arrived in Lucas, Kansas, his family had grown to five children, although his two stepchildren, now in their mid twenties, stayed behind.
As soon as Dinsmoor arrived, he bought a small farm east of Lucas for $800.
Unfortunately, the family arrived in Lucas at a time of economic downturn.
Kansas farmers struggled, in particular, due to drought, which caused crop failures and major dust storms.
By the end of the 1880s, many couldn’t pay back loans due to lower crop production.
It’s unknown how badly this widespread depression hurt Dinsmoor, but regardless his family moved to Nebraska just two years after arriving in Lucas.
Dinsmoor later sold insurance for a company based out of Omaha, so perhaps this explains why the family made the move.
However, less than one year after living in Nebraska, they lost everything in a house fire.
This is probably why they ended up back on their land in Lucas less than one year later.
Back in Lucas, Dinsmoor became heavily involved in the trendy Populist movement.
By 1892, Dinsmoor was probably the biggest Populist supporter in Lucas.
The local newspaper called him a radical due to his outspoken and sometimes controversial views.
In 1896, Dinsmoor served as a delegate at the Populist national convention in St. Louis.
He also held large Populist rallies at his house, sometimes attracting as many as 300 people.
That same year, he achieved his first and only elected office, as justice of the peace of Fairview Township.
However, just as the Populist Party began to fade in the late 1890s, so did Dinsmoor’s political ambitions.
In 1898, he lost a state representative race, which devastated him. He vowed to never run for public office again after that.
After the Populist movement declined, he became committed to the growing socialist movement.
In 1905, at the age of 62, Dinsmoor sold his farm and moved into Lucas, buying land that would later be world famous and on the National Register of Historic Places.
Despite not having any experience in architecture or engineering, he built a stone log cabin almost entirely by himself, completing it two years later.
But he always had cement, and couldn’t stop creating with it.
After he built a cement fence, he built a grape arbor that reaches from the back porch to the road.
From there, at the end of the arbor facing the street, he created Adam and Eve, although Adam started out as a scarecrow he messed up.
Unlike the Adam and Eve of the Book of Genesis, these were 8-foot tall and had marble eyes.
After Adam and Eve, Dinsmoor began constructing the first of his eventual 29 concrete trees, some as high as 40 feet.
Over the next 22 years, Dinsmoor used 130 tons of cement to create over 150 life-sized statues.
Today, if these statues were cut up and sold at an auction, they’d likely sell for millions of dollars.
Many of the earlier statues were references to the Bible, while his later ones were references to Populism or Dinsmoor’s political views.
He often criticized monopolies, the plutocrats, and special interests that took hold of governments.
By 1915, people not only in Lucas but also from outside town began to notice.
Dinsmoor loved to mess with the tourists.
By connecting a pipe from a his basement to the Tree of Life and Death, he would talk through the tree as visitors walked by, usually freaking them out.
Always opportunistic, he made money from the tourists whenever possible.
He even charged for postcards from pictures of the sculptures for up to 10 cents each.
On his most famous postcard, he took a double exposed photo to make it look like he was looking at himself dead in a casket.
By 1916, more than 100 people were visiting what became known as Dinsmoor’s Garden of Eden every week.
In 1917, at the height the Garden of Eden becoming a major tourist attraction, Francis died, and Dinsmoor became a widower.
He had built a mausoleum for her after she died, but the town did not let him bury her there.
And so, in the middle of the night, Dinsmoor and his friend, Thomas Banks, dug up her remains from the cemetery and placed her in the mausoleum.
The town never bothered to get the body back.
Perhaps to keep his mind off of the loss, Dinsmoor kept on building and expanding the concrete garden.
Sometime in 1921, he met a 17-year old Czech immigrant in town named Emilie Brozek.
Eventually, Dinsmoor talked her into moving in as a housekeeper.
Um, yeah, the two married on April 22, 1924, with Brozek already pregnant with his child.
Dinsmoor was 81. Brozek was just 20.
The age gap added a new element to the story of the Garden of Eden, and the national press delighted in telling the story of this new “Adam and Eve.”
That same year, Dinsmoor constructed probably his most controversial sculpture, called the “Crucifixion of Labor.”
Dinsmoor depicted labor, or mankind, as tortured while the figures of a lawyer, doctor, preacher, and banker, who he argued reaped the rewards of labor on the backs of everyone else, just watch.
It was the last sculpture he made. By 1929, he was completely blind due to cataracts.
Emilie and Dinsmoor had two children, Emily Jane and John.
John was born when Dinsmoor was 84 years old.
John would grow up to fight in the Vietnam War, and it was the only case I could ever find where the dad fought in the Civil War and the son fought in the Vietnam War.
Near the end of his life, Dinsmoor created a will stating that the Garden of Eden, his home, and the Mausoleum remain strictly for educational purposes after he passed.
He died from a stroke on July 21, 1932.
He had planned his burial out, of course. His body would be placed in the mausoleum next to Francis and preserved, with a glass-topped concrete casket he had built years before.
He wanted everyone to be able to view his corpse for one dollar to help cover maintenance costs of the property.
Next to the casket, a cement jug he created was placed so that, if he was summoned to hell, he could fill up on water before he went.
Today, Dinsmoor’s Garden of Eden preserves his legacy of individualism and nonconformism.
Dinsmoor didn’t care what others thought about him. However, when others did care, he opportunistically seized the moment.
He was a radical in Lucas.
He was ahead of his time, but today many of his views as well as his Garden of Eden are more popular than ever.
So that's all about Samuel Dinsmoor
If you happen to be on Interstate 70 between Denver and Kansas City, you should take a little detour to Lucas Kansas
Check out the Garden of Eden and the home that Samuel Dinsmoor built with his bare hands.
It took him 22 years to build that thing.
It's a really cool place.
Thanks for watching!