Salvation Mountain
Built by Leonard Knight in 1989, Salvation Mountain is made of adobe bricks, discarded tires and windows, automobile parts, and thousands of gallons of paint.
Knight considered Salvation Mountain to be his life’s work and purpose. He believed the religious experience should be one of simplicity, that you should accept Jesus into your heart, repent your sins, and be saved.
Slab City
Directly behind Salvation Mountain lies Slab City. Known as “The Last Free Place in America” is an unincorporated community of squatters and artists. It took its name from concrete slabs that remained from the abandoned World War II Marine Corps barracks of Camp Dunlap.
Current residents refer to themselves as Slabbies while tourists are called Normies. The two individuals who had the greatest impact in the starting of the current settlement were Leonard Knight who created Salvation Mountain and Charlie Russel who built the first art installations in the area called East Jesus.
East Jesus is an experimental, sustainable and habitable art installation located in the Slab City area. There is no religious connotation in the name East Jesus – it is a colloquialism for a place in the middle of nowhere beyond the edge of service availability; the off-grid facility operates with no municipal utilities. It now serves as a year-round nonprofit, and totes the title of being the only art museum in Imperial County.
