Part of the charm of the Pathway Thru the Bible, one of the oddest roadside attractions in Montana, is that it is so rarely visited.
That doesn’t prevent me from wanting to spread the word, to encourage other people to go there.
I have taken dozens of people there over the past 25 years, and I think I can say that nobody has been disappointed. Adults generally have been skeptical to begin with, especially those who had driven Highway 212 between Rockvale and Red Lodge countless times and had never stopped in before.
The perverse, unconscious logic was, if they had never pulled over before, it must not be worth the trouble. Nor is the name likely to generate much interest on the part of your average adult. To a lot of people, Pathway Thru the Bible sounds like Disney on Ice, only cheesier.
Kids don’t really care where the car stops, as long as it stops. They always want to get out and investigate the world, and in their minds the whole world is supposed to look like Pathway Thru the Bible. The author of the children’s books “A Series of Unfortunate Events” understood the desire of children to live in a world of phantasmagorical buildings and surreal landscapes.
That’s what Pathway Thru the Bible reminds me of, a guided tour of the Bible, led by Lemony Snicket.
The statues, tableaus, sculpture groupings, buildings, engravings and mosaics all point to some book or scene from the Bible, but to me, more than anything, they point to the unique, eccentric genius of their creator, Adolph Land.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
The arched bridge represents the rainbow leading to Mount Ararat, resting place of Noah’s Ark.
More about Adolph in a moment. You probably want to know where Pathway Thru the Bible is. It’s less than a mile east of Joliet, on the north side of 212 right before that big bend in the highway. Look for the expansive grove of trees in that otherwise fairly treeless stretch. In amongst the foliage is a small Pathway Thru the Bible sign, a larger, older, crooked sign that reads “Biblical Story in Stone,” and between them an old log and plaster building with faded lettering on the front.
Adolph and his wife, Helen, moved there in the mid-1950s, evidently selling their honey out of the building just mentioned. Adolph began building Pathway Thru the Bible in the early 1960s and stayed at it until his death in 1984.
I never did meet him, but I spoke with Helen when I wrote a story on Pathway Thru the Bible for the Billings Gazette 14 years ago. She told some wonderful stories about her late husband, a Lutheran who read the Bible every night for at least half an hour. In preparation for illustrating a new scene from the Bible, he’d read the passages in question over and over until he had conceived a way to tell the story in stone.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
This telescope represents the star-gazing pursuits of the Magi. Generations of kids have peered through its rusty length.
Well, not stone exclusively. Adolph collected rocks, geodes, seashells, petrified wood and petrified algae, crystals, corals and agates. Over the years, friends who traveled abroad started bringing back artifacts they thought Adolph could use, including stones from the Jordan River and Vatican City.
What he did with all those materials is stunning — and delightfully weird. The walls of Jericho, felled by the blast of trumpets, are represented by a tower and a heap of tumbled bricks. A line of pillars representing Solomon’s Porch, outside the great temple in Jerusalem, were salvaged by Adolph when a Red Lodge bank was being demolished.
My daughters’ favorite feature is known as the Wise Men’s Tower. It is a pile of rock with a telescope on top, representing the Three Wise Men’s indulgence in astronomy. The cast-iron stairs leading to the platform, according to a guidebook available on site, were salvaged from the famous Josephine steamboat.
The telescope, or whatever it originally was, never did work very well, but it thrilled the kids every time. (Their dad was pretty impressed, too.)
The site is not all that large, but it is crammed with dozens of such representations, all of them worth investigating, whether your interest is in the religious aspects of the scenes or in Adolph’s remarkable obsession.
He apparently had a sense of whimsy, too. Scattered throughout the site, tucked into little nooks and crannies, are numerous pieces of pure kitsch — plastic and ceramic statues of squirrels, rabbits, dwarves, toads and more.
Three years after Adolph died, taking care of the Pathway became too much for Helen. After some looking, she engineered a house swap with Rick and Verdine White of Billings, who wanted to raise their children in a small town.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
These merry dwarves are not found in the Bible, but Adolph Land gave them a home in Pathway Thru the Bible.
Verdine told me they also prayed hard about the proposal and decided they had been called to maintain Adolph’s life work. They still live there and still maintain the Pathway, mostly keeping it tidy and in good repair.
Even after 27 years there, Verdine said, “I totally love every minute of all the cleanup out there.”
As has always been the case, admission to the grounds is free, though there is a donation box. Verdine said some tour groups stop by occasionally, but she estimates that fewer than 10 people a week stop by — on a stretch of highway that sees some 2,500 vehicles a day.
You’re welcome to tour the grounds yourself, or knock on the Whites’ door. If Verdine’s there, you might get a guided tour. Although Rick is now retired and has more time to work on the Pathway, Verdine said they have to acknowledge that they, like Helen, won’t able to take care of the Pathway Thru the Bible indefinitely.
“That’s exactly what we’re praying for,” Verdine said, “that someone else will feel this is where they need to be.”
