Along the Post Rock Scenic Byway, Wilson and Lucas preserve a landscape shaped by native post rock limestone and by immigrant, artistic, and local building traditions. In Wilson, the Midland Hotel was built in 1899 as the most magnificent facility in the Midwest and was later featured in the 1973 movie Paper Moon before being restored to its original splendour. The town also includes many historic limestone buildings such as the Wilson Opera House Museum, and the Wilson City Jail, circa 1911, originally served as a water tower with the jail in the bottom. In Lucas, the Garden of Eden was built in 1907 by 64-year-old Samuel Perry Dinsmoor, a retired school teacher, Civil War veteran, farmer, and Populist politician, and its grounds include a historic post rock farmhouse and his concrete masterpieces. Stone Cottage Farm was built in 1895 by a Czechoslovakian immigrant using post rock limestone quarried on the site, and Brandt's Historic Meat Market preserves an old-fashioned meat counter, cash register, murals of the Czech motherland, and historic family photos. The byway also follows the story of post rock itself, a chalky limestone of uniform thickness eight to nine inches deep that was used for homes, farmsteads, bridge ruins, and fence posts on the treeless plain. The idea of using stone for fence posts came from C. F. Sawyer on the Saline River, now Wilson Lake, southwest of Lucas; posts quarried in 1878 still stand in fields north of the lake. Vonada Stone Company and Quarry continues the quarrying tradition with demonstrations of the craft. Wilson became known as the Czech Capital of Kansas after immigrants from Czechoslovakia arrived in the late 1800s and first lived in dugouts until homes could be built from post rock limestone. The region also fostered grassroots art, including the World's Largest Souvenir Travel Plate, a tribute to Lucas art environments and to the history and industry that sustained the community since 1887; the Deeble Folk Art and Rock Garden, where school teacher Florence Deeble created cement postcard scenes inspired by S.P. Dinsmoor; the Post Rock Courtyard, honoring stone masons who worked with post rock limestone from 1870 to 1920; and the Grassroots Art Center, devoted to artists working outside academic fine art and beyond folk art traditions with recycled materials and garage sale finds.