The Cabin Home (Lucas, Kansas)

The Cabin Home (Lucas, Kansas)
by Denyce Cribbs

In digging around the surname files in our library, I came across a little booklet in the Dinsmoor file entitled, Pictorial History of The Cabin Home in Garden of Eden.  Written by S.P. Dinsmoor, it’s a journal of sorts about the home and surrounding gardens that the author constructed in Lucas, Kansas. 

Dinsmoor served three years in the Civil War, claiming to see the capture of Robert E. Lee.  Following the war, he taught school in Illinois for five years.  In 1870 he married his first wife and became a farmer.  He eventually moved to Lucas, Kansas in 1891, and built his Cabin Home in 1907, and later the surrounding grounds which he named Garden of Eden.  He married his second wife in 1924.  He was 81 at the time, and she was 20 years old.

The cabin he built was distinctive in that the logs were all made of cement.  Dinsmoor states:

There were eleven rooms besides the bathroom, three halls, two closets with cave and light plant under back porch.  The porches, side walks, fence, strawberry and flower beds, fish pool, grape-arbor, three U.S. flags, Adam and Eve, the devil, coffin, jug, visitors’ dining hall, labor crucified, two bird and animal cages, and was house are all made with cement.

Dinsmoor goes on to describe the Garden of Eden that he created on his grounds, consisting of Adam and Eve cement statues, the Devil, Cain and Abel, and other creatures to complete his rendition of famous Bible stories.  Eccentric to be sure, he also built his own mausoleum and coffin, complete with instructions for their use after he passes away.  He states in his will that no one besides his descendants shall enter his mausoleum for less than one dollar, so that profits from visitors can be used to maintain the place.  He builds his own coffin to have a plate glass lid so he can break out on the final Resurrection Day.  At the foot of the coffin he places a jug so he will be prepared with water on the final day of reckoning.

This little booklet in an interesting legacy of a man’s creativity, complete with photos on every page.  It gets my curiosity going, though, about what comes next.  Does the Cabin Home still exist?  Is Dinsmoor buried there? I’ll try to answer those questions in my next post.