In September 1888, in company with Elder Andrew Jenson and Bishop Black, of Deseret, I visited this place, also Far West and Adam-Ondi Ahman. This trip brought vividly before me many sayings of the Prophet, more particularly of his peaking of the Garden of Eden, which he said was situated at Independence, which is only about ten miles to the northwest of Liberty jail. The Prophet said it had been manifested unto him that here was where our Father Adam was placed, and where his home was until his fall, when he was driven out into the dreary world, and from thence he took his departure northeast about seventy miles, to where a stake of Zion was located, and it was named Adam-Ondi-Ahman by revelation. This knowledge makes this land, which is good and greatly blessed, all the more attractive to the Saints, and only creates a desire to cherish not only the memory of the land, but this loathsome jail as well, which is now going to ruins.

The Bible tells us about the Garden of Eden, and why not locate it here in this godly land as well as any other part of the earth? Many changes have taken place since Adam's time, as, for instance, the great deluge and the division of the earth in the days of Peleg. Again, at the crucifixion, when the solid rocks were rent, mountains cast up, and great convulsions took place on the face of the whole earth. All of these events would naturally tend to make it difficult to locate the Garden of without revelation, and this is how I became informed on this subject.

I was with the Prophet Joseph Smith sixty miles northeast of Liberty jail in 1838, less than one year before he was imprisoned there. We were standing with others on the hill Adam-ondi-Ahman. The Prophet said, pointing to a mound of stones:

“There is where Father Adam built an altar when he was driven from the Garden of Eden and offered up sacrifice unto the Lord.”

He further said that the Garden of Eden was in or near Independence, the center stake of Zion. I thought it a great privilege to be at that time with the Prophet, and to hear his words regarding the mound and pile of rocks laid up at so early a period of the world's history.