The Cross Garden - No Ice Water in Hell…

Apr 26

The Cross Garden - Prattville, Alabama. Photos by Ricky Davis of TRD Photography - Kodak Tri X Film Photography

As I travel a decent bit, I love keeping an eye out sites like Roadside America. Early this year I saw an article pop up somewhere about The Cross Garden in Prattville, Alabama. It caught my eye as I’ve been working on a series of photographs since last summer covering different religious based signs in the South and beyond.

The history of The Cross Garden is quite fascinating. I read a couple articles about it on Roadside America as well as some other sites that actually got to talk with W.C. Rice, who built this amazing site. Mr. Rice has since passed and it’s been upkept by his family. After my visit, I was contacted by a family friend who lives on the property and had seen my TikTok clip from taking photos. I enjoyed getting to talk with her a lot and she shared with me some more information.

Since Roadside America has their article with their interview with Mr. Rice, I’m going to share some of what I discussed in messages with the family friend who reached out. She told me that as a child, Mr. Rice and her granddaddy were family friends and she remembers listening to their conversations. “Mr. Rice was very well-read and quite intelligent.” She stated their are a lot of odd rumors about why he started The Cross Garden but it truly was built as an expression of his faith and a conversation started to witness to others.

So one of the things that struck me the most about The Cross Garden is the dedication to ones faith that one must have to undertake a project like this. Whether you agree with the sentiment or not, this was done by someone who truly believes and is trying to practice what they preach. It’s easy to put up a billboard sign on the road but never have to answer for the message in your personal life, but building something like this at your home and then being willing to talk and discuss things with people who visited, it’s definitely something that someone was following what they believed and I find that commendable. I was told that back in the 70’s and 80’s in the early stages of The Cross Garden, the visitors and interactions were quite memorable.

According to Roadside America, Mr. Rice passed away in 2004. When I found the place it was a lot smaller than what I had seen online from the past. The family friend I was talking with told me it has had a lot of vandalism issues, so it’s not to where it used to be.

As a photographer who enjoys traveling around America, the South in particular, I feel blessed to have gotten to visit and take these photos. I wish that I’d been able to to see more of the site, but there were some no trespassing signs up now, so I worked to stay basically from the road taking photos where I saw the signs. I always try to be respectful of things like that, especially with this being a private residence.