Slab City — Blog 1 — Worlds Largest Website

I made it to my third motorcycle lesson before my first serious accident. It’s not surprising that I got in a bike accident, I’m prone to those I’ve found. The surprising part was that I wasn’t on a motorcycle. I was commuting to motorcycle class on my bicycle when suddenly I was catapulted over the handlebars and onto the pavement.

I didn’t know that sometimes wheels fall off bicycles. When it happens the front fork digs into the pavement and launches the rider through the air and into a lifetime of distrust for bikes.

After a few months of physical therapy for a torn shoulder ligament, I was back to learning how to ride. It took more motorcycle lessons then I care to admit. Among three friends, I was by far the worst off. We all held my breath when I went in for my skills test. In a room full of 16 year olds getting their driver’s license, I may have been the most nervous. Just getting to the test I had stalled the motorcycle twice and had to call a friend, standing squarely in traffic, so he could remind me how to get back in gear.

*Roy’s Motel, on the tail end of Route 66*

The motorcycle I had been practicing on was stolen the week before my test. My neighbor Jared offered to let me use his, which was possible after we both scrambled to get the back taxes paid 12 hours before. We duct taped orange Plexiglas around the front light and prayed it passed inspection.

Needless to say, I wasn’t fooling the driver’s ed instructor when I tripped getting off the bike. My leg got caught swinging over the seat of the 1979 Honda, and I again found myself flat on the asphalt, while a confused man with a clipboard towered over me. He had a puzzled look that I can only describe as a dance instructor realizing one of their students hadn’t met the prerequisite of learning how to walk.

I looked up at him and said, “I’m still practicing that.”

Luckily, there is no official way to penalize someone for not knowing how to get off a motorcycle, and one week later, I was convoying with some of my best friends across the California desert.

As desolate as Route 66 can be, we splintered off the route relentlessly, riding further and further into the most barren corners of the desert. Our final destination would be Slab City, not a municipal town, but a shantytown made of tents, tarps, and desert dwellers.

Slab City was settled in the 1950’s after the abandonment of the Fort Dunlap marine training base. The only things left behind when the base closed were the concrete slabs from the barracks, and an outdoor swimming pool turned skate park.

*Kelso Sand Dunes, in route to Slab City, are 600 feet tall*

Part squatter city and part art commune, it's affectionately dubbed “the last free place on Earth”. Residents fall somewhere between rebel anarchist and idealist hippy. The diversity in ideologies doesn’t make life easy, but the residents are living life on their own terms, and for them, that matters most.

People do not just stumble across this place. The Slabs are far from the dense coastal cities of Southern California. The journey stretches across the desert, past ghost towns and long-abandoned gas stations. The only noteworthy landmark emerges about 150 miles east of LA, where the Salton Sea shimmers in the distance, flickering relentless sun-rays across the horizon.

The Salton Sea was a bustling family vacation destination in the 1950s, but as the sea began to shrink and become polluted, the hotels and resorts dried up too. Now, its banks are littered with ghost towns, the largest being Bombay Beach.

Bombay Beach is a haunting collection of over a hundred abandoned houses, buildings, and trailers. It sits more than 200 feet below sea level—one of the lowest elevations in North America. In June, with temperatures soaring to 110 degrees, the sea served as a cruel reverse mirage—a source of water that's 100% real, yet so toxic that almost nothing can survive.

The wasteland of Bombay Beach merely serves as the prelude to the reality of Slab City, a harsh backdrop the community was born from. We still had to venture 20 miles deeper into the desert to reach our final destination. The entire ride, my mind tried to sort out the logistics, but it never made sense. Slab City should not be inhabitable.

Water is scarce here. As one resident put it, “a few times a year, we get six inch rain. That’s when the rain drops fall six inches apart”. Water is at such a premium, when I visited the Slab City coffee shop (which was brewed in an old Gatorade cooler under a collection of tarps and bed sheets), I was instructed to place my empty mug back on the table for the next customer. It was unclear who the next customer might be.

Knowing the rules of the Slabs can vary between more than a dozen ragtag neighborhoods within its unincorporated limits. East Jesus invites people to become immersed in desert art, repurposing abandoned planes and tires into beautiful thought-provoking sculptures.

East Jesus is not to be confused with neighboring West Satan. Only 100 feet away, West Satan advertises “death to unwelcome visitors after dark” on a home-made sign in a sea of baby doll heads.

Without electricity, navigating the maze of tarps, lean-tos and tents can be unpredictable. Since the only roads are hardened dirt, marked by hand-painted street signs, any deep venture into the Slabs is uncommon for outsiders. Crime can go unchecked, drug use seems rampant, and the 120-degree heat spells in the summer make life miserable at best and deadly at worst.

We heard marshals had recently round up fugitives before our visit, a periodic occurrence evidently. The Slabs have been an “end of the road” destination for decades.

Regardless, thousands of visitors come to this corner of the desert every year. While many do not venture into the Slabs, all stop and wonder at the iconic entrance to the desert community. It was the first thing that greeted us from the distance. In a treeless environment below sea level, it can be seen for miles: the World's Largest John 3:16 monument, famously known as Salvation Mountain.

The 50-foot-tall, 150-foot-wide mountain is constructed almost entirely from adobe clay. From a distance, it stands as a surreal tapestry of technicolor forms and textures. Close up, it reveals a dazzling display of doves, flowers, and hearts amongst a sea of color. The streams of red, yellow, and blue flow off the mountain and to the feet of onlookers.

While everything near the Slabs looks out of place, Salvation Mountain is in a class of its own. In an environment where survival already feels impossible, building a homemade mountain is not recommended. Still, one stubborn man did just that for 35 years.

*One of several additions on the mountain include “the museum” which is meant to resemble the semi-inflated hot air ballon which crashed in the desert*

In 1970, Leonard Knight had recently found God, and he wanted to proclaim a simple message of love across the world. Knight believed the most effective way to communicate this message was a hot-air balloon evangelical world tour. Knight set out to build a homemade hot air balloon proudly adorning the words “God is Love''.

Knight didn’t know much about hot air balloons, and he didn’t have the means to buy one. He wanted to find a spot to learn and build, far from others, and maybe most importantly, free from power lines.

While scouting the country for a spot to launch his balloon, his truck broke down near Slab City (the most extreme version of crashing your bicycle on your way to a motorcycle lesson). Slab City has always attracted visionary outcasts, and they embraced him by donating scrap fabric and sewing equipment to his cause. After a few months, Knight was ready for launch.

Things went wrong almost immediately. You could call it a perfect storm of events, but between the Frankenstein-esque balloon fabrics and the fact Knight had never actually piloted a balloon before, crashing was probably inevitable.

His evangelical world tour ended in a crash landing only a half mile south from the Slab City launch pad. Still, Knight was determined. Rather than traveling the country to proclaim his message, it would be people from across the world who would come to him. In the very spot his balloon landed, Salvation Mountain was born.

Knight would live on his homemade mountain for the next 35 years. With no running water, electricity, phone, or air conditioning, his only amenity was the nearby hot springs where he bathed at night when the desert temperature dropped. Knight mixed the sulfur water with mud and straw to add to his mountain daily. The result would become the entrance point for anyone coming into Slab City – and the only reason the Slabs survived.

In the early 2000’s, California tried to reclaim the old Fort Dunlap land and sell it. Rather than being pushed out, the band of desert dwellers organized a defense around their belief that the Slabs were religious grounds, particularly Salvation Mountain. In response, the state attempted to dismantle the monument, claiming the paint was toxic to the environment. State officials collected soil samples that they purported to have increased amounts of lead.

Believing the tests were rigged, the community crowd-funded their own environmental scientists who concluded the paint was non-toxic. Supporters from across the country came to defense of the mountain, sparking a debate that reached as far as congress when US Senator Barbara Boxer referred to the mountain as “a profoundly strange sculpture wrought from the desert”, and a “national treasure for the ages”.

The grass-root pressure campaign won over the public, and the state backed off from their plans. If it wasn’t for Leonard Knight, the last free place on earth would have been sold.

*Screenshot from “Into the Wild”. Knight was briefly featured playing himself.*

Slab City has its problems, and they merely begin with the logistical nightmare of sustaining an off-the-grid community in such harsh conditions. Stories online are plentiful of drugs and violence, and a tradition of arson for excommunicating unwanted residents.

Despite these challenges, the Slabs offer a last refuge for an entire community of people. People who, whether chosen or unchosen, are misfits and outcasts to the rest of the world. At the Slabs, being a misfit is encouraged. Freedom is encouraged, so long as it only impacts yourself, and In a world of lean-tos and tarps, your “self” is on full display. There's something wonderful about that.

*Perfect occasion for my John 3:16 socks*

Slab City allowed Leonard Knight to be his true self, perhaps even his best self. His homemade mountain, built from half a million gallons of donated paint, was beloved by the same group of misfits. Few would describe Slab City as a utopia, but anywhere that a hippy, fugitive, anarchist, and West Satan (satanist?) can each pick up the same brush and leave their mark, is something special.

Leonard Knight passed away in 2014. Shortly before his death, he made one final request, that the mountain would belong to the people who call Slab City home - the eclectic group of desert dwellers who visited him for years. The outcasts who embraced him, and turned an odd obsession into a masterpiece.

The revolving-door of desert dwellers has certainly changed. That has always been the nature of Slab City. Between those transitions, the mountain has remained the one constant, and most days there is someone with a brush carrying on the message. A message that still proclaims “God is love” on a stubborn, homemade mountain in the most godforsaken corner of the desert.

Locations mentioned:

Bombay Beach | 33.35156, -115.72711
Salvation Mountain | 33.25419, -115.47264
Slab City | 33.25797, -115.46233

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Salvation Mountain

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