If you drive through the arid desert of southern California near the sea Salton, after the town of Niland, you might see something strange and colorful emerging from the sands. Located close to the officially unofficial camping Slab City, the home of eccentric and weird monument in perfect harmony with the experience of surreal desert. This is Salvation Mountain, an art installation and labor of love of a man.
Salvation Mountain is an art installation built of straw bales and adobe, decorated with bright messages.
Flickr / EsotericSapience
Flickr / MythicSeabass
Salvation Mountain was created by Leonard Knight, a resident of the area who wanted to share his Christian faith with the world through art.
YouTube / Seeker Stories
The mountain is covered with prayers, Bible verses and messages love and peace. It started as a small monument to faith and knight just kept building. The monument became a mountain. During the first four years, the mountain collapsed due to low structure, but Knight was not discouraged. Instead, he was grateful that the structurally dangerous mountain was shot because he was able to build a better one.
Take a tour of Hi Mountain with the man himself in this video:
YouTube / Bob Levesque
Originally, the plan of Chevalier was to create a hot air balloon with messages on it, but the ball failed after 14 years of work and planning. He was going, but something compelled him to build a monument. The rest is history.
Salvation Mountain as seen from a satellite.
Google Maps
installation, which came to be regarded as a folk art monument, regularly attracts visitors and has become a major attraction in Slab City area. It was declared a folk art site by the Folk Art Society of America, and was considered a "national treasure" by California Senator Barbara Boxer.
Thousands of gallons of paint were used to create Salvation Mountain.
Flickr / EsotericSapience
paintings are full of artificial mountain and surrounding areas, as this mailbox letters and several cars and old trucks.
empty paint cans are a common sight here.
Flickr / kellinahandbasket
Knight believes he used about 100,000 gallons of paint on his artwork.
Flickr / Brian
Leonard Knight died in 2014 at the age of 83, after three decades of construction, painting, and keeping Salvation Mountain. Today, volunteers from across the country come to maintain Salvation Mountain, giving it a new coat of bright paint and make the Knight messages are still readable and clear. Site visitors also donate paint cans to keep bright Salvation Mountain.
A volunteer touches part of the mountain.
Flickr / Brian
YouTube / Seeker Stories
Salvation Mountain remains a tourist attraction in the strange desert land and dreamlike. Thank you to volunteers and donations through its Web site, this amazing work of art, a testimony of love and spiritual devotion of a man, is as bright and bold as ever. If you're in California and you would like something a little quirkier than the usual attractions, you'll definitely want to check this out.
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