Slab City & Salvation Mountain

Slab City or The Slabs is a community of several thousand squatters & camper van dwellers who have built their very own city away from the constraints of conventional society. The site is decommissioned & uncontrolled, it has no electricity, running water, sewers or toilets.

We arrived in the neighbouring village of Niland as daylight broke, in search of this creatively inspiring, post apocalyptic masterpiece in the desert. After a few wrong turns we crossed a railroad track & continued down, what looked like an abandoned old dirt road, ladened with pot holes & discarded waste. We seemed to be heading towards nothing, when suddenly we reached a sign which read ‘Welcome to Slab City, The Last Free Place’.

Our early morning arrival into Slab City meant that the residents were all still dormant. This came as somewhat of a relief, as we had heard stories about the number of outlaws, convicts & addicts that were using Slab City as a place to hide away, enabling them to go about their lives without harassment from the authorities. The reputation of Slab City being as close to the ‘Old West’ as you are ever going to find seemed somewhat appropriate, as the tumble weed rolled by in the cold desert breeze.

Our inquisitive sense of adventure had led us off the beaten track & outside of our comfort zone.

Like the many visitors that had come before us, we were not completely aware of the purpose or sentiment of this unique technicolored mountain, but only of its existence.

We later found out that this visionary environment covering a hill in the Colorado Desert, seven miles from the Salton Sea, is made from adobe, straw & thousands of gallons of lead-free paint. It was created by the recently deceased local resident, Leonard Knight.