S. P. Dinsmoor's Garden of Eden

Samuel Perry Dinsmoor was born in Ohio on March 8, 1843, served in the Union army as a nurse, taught school in Illinois, and in 1888 brought his family to farm southeast of Lucas. When he retired to town he built what he called the Cabin Home out of post rock limestone, quarried in long narrow lengths, some twenty feet long, and laid up with dovetailed corners like a log cabin. No two of its windows or doors are the same size.

From 1907 to 1928 he filled the lot around it with cement. By his own count, on July 1, 1927, he had used 113 tons, 2,273 sacks, on porches, walks, fence, flags, coffin and figures, including fifteen cement trees thirty to forty feet tall strung with lights. The west side is the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve and the devil. The north side, facing the street, is "modern civilization as I see it": a dog after a fox after a bird after a worm after a leaf, and Labor crucified by a doctor, a lawyer, a preacher and a capitalist. "If it is not right I am to blame," he wrote, "but if the Garden of Eden is not right Moses is to blame. He wrote it up and I built it."

He sited it where railroad passengers could see it, and charged admission and led tours himself. He died on July 21, 1932, and lies in the mausoleum in a concrete coffin with a glass lid, which the guided tour still shows.