Gilgal Gardens

Some friends in our ward told us about this tiny little park in Salt Lake called Gilgal Gardens. They were interested in taking a tour of the Masonic Temple, and offered to show us this little place while we were downtown. I'd never heard of it, but it was really neat!

Gilgal Gardens is a little park located on 749 E. and 500 S. It was created by Thomas Battersby Child Jr in 1957 and he worked on it until his death in 1963. For years, he was the bishop of the 10th ward in Salt Lake which met in the beautiful meeting house located directly north of the gardens. And he built the garden in his backyard. He named it after Gilgal, a biblical location where Joshua told the Israelites to place 12 stones as a memorial.

So there are all these statues and sculptures and everything is very symbolic. Child said, "You may think I am a nut but I hope I have aroused your thinking and curiosity." In addition to the statues are scriptures and hymns etched into stepping stones. I'm not really a deep thinker, but I think you could spend hours in this garden trying to figure out what the sculptures and the scriptures he attached to it all mean.

Here's Joseph Smith's head on a sphinx.

This was a self-sculpture, and yes... his pants are made of brick. So cool!

We came up with a lot of good interpretations about some of these scultpures, and I can't remember them.

All in all, this was a fascinating place! If it hadn't have been freezing that day, I think we could've spent hours there! I recommend seeing this place if you're ever in Salt Lake.