SALVATION MOUNTAIN | CALIFORNIA

The Mountain of love SALVATION MOUNTAIN | SONORA DESERT | CALIFORNIA

WORDS AND PHOTO BY SIMON URWIN There are purposefully no signs indicating the way to Slab City – a transient community of artists, snowbirds, anarchists and grifters who squat amongst the concrete remains of Camp Dunlap, a WWII Marine barracks in California’s Sonoran Desert. The entrance to the Mad Max-esque sprawl of trailers, tents and lean-tos is heralded however by the psychedelic Salvation Mountain, a 50-ft high piece of religious folk art that serves as the unofficial centrepiece of the community, as well as a symbol of its counter-culture identity. It was handbuilt by local resident and devout Christian, the late Leonard Knight, who spent 28 years fashioning the fever-dream complex from adobe, straw, bricks and vehicle parts, before painting it with Bible verses and the Sinner’s prayer to spread his message: that God is love, and that Love is the strongest force on earth - capable of defeating all the evils of the modern world.

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