To the left, the Sermon on the Mount. To the right, the rooster that crowed after Peter's denial.

Pathway Thru The Bible

Joliet, Montana

In 1951 Adolph and Helen Land moved from Iowa to Montana and sold honey from a roadside building. Seven years later, inspired by the memory of some of the elaborate Catholic rock grottos back in Iowa, Adolph (who was not Catholic) began building his own version on his property: Pathway Thru The Bible.

The Three Visitors pay a call on Abraham.

With none of the mysticism of the Catholic grottoes, Pathway Thru the Bible sets out to matter-of-factly depict specific biblical scenes and characters -- using only rocks. This was not an easy concept to pull off. According to Helen, Adolph would read the relevant Bible passages over and over until he had figured out how to show the story in uncarved stone.

Bulldozed bank pillars repurposed into Solomon's Porch.

Adolph worked on the pathway until around 1980 and died in 1983. In 1987 Helen sold the property to a young couple, Rick and Verdine White, specifically because they pledged to take care of the Pathway Thru The Bible. They've done so ever since. "We're gonna be here until we absolutely cannot do it any more; that's our goal," Verdine told us.

According to Verdine, Pathway to the Bible was built almost entirely by hand. The Pathway twists through gardens of flowers and shrubs and is too jam-packed for construction equipment, which makes one wonder how Adolph was able to move some of the biggest rocks, which weigh several tons apiece (Perhaps he mastered the same levitating technique as Ed Leedskalnin at Coral Castle).

The Pathway is biblically chronological, more or less. Since visitors were presumed to be familiar with Bible stories, Adolph was able to convey a lot with very little. The collapsed walls of Jericho, for example, are represented by a heap of bricks. Solomon's temple in Jerusalem is a line of truncated pillars from a demolished bank from the neighboring town of Red Lodge.

Entrance to the stable at Bethlehem. On top is the tiny tomb of Lazarus.

Domed grotto inside the Mount of Temptation.

The Dawn of Creation is a jumble of fossils and petrified wood with occasional vertical rocks (planets?) rising upward out of the chaos. Lot's Wife -- turned into a pillar of salt in the Bible -- is a human-like pile of cemented white limestone chunks. "Mount Ararat" -- a big rock pile -- is connected to a rock labeled "Noah's Ark" by an archway topped with upright rocks, which represent a procession of the Ark's departing animals.

The Sermon on the Mount features a "Messiah" pile surrounded by a crowd of smaller upright rocks that stand as his enraptured audience. Calvary is a rock wasteland, with human footprints set into concrete representing the Crucifixion's invisible onlookers.

Lot's wife made one biblical slip-up and this is the result.

Adolph even allowed himself to have some fun. The ten plagues of Egypt, for example, are compressed into a single ceramic frog.

The Mount of Temptation -- Adolph's biggest and most grotto-like creation -- features an interior domed ceiling of rock crystals. It's here that visitors can pick up a copy of the Pathway Thru The Bible guide book, leave a donation, and sign the guest register.

Despite Rick and Verdine's best efforts, a few of the Pathway rocks have fallen out of place, others are being uprooted by trees, and overgrowth has blocked some of the structural details. Verdine said that the Wise Men's Tower, which offered an elevated view of the Pathway, had to be closed to visitors in the early 2020s when a tree fell on it. The Tower was the only display not based on a biblical reference.

Verdine told us that she and Rick -- no longer young -- are always on the lookout for someone who can help keep the Pathway in good repair. In 2024 the Pathway Thru The Bible was registered with the Montana Historical Society, which, Verdine said, means that no matter what happens to Rick and Verdine, Adolph's stoney-spiritual creation will be protected.