Guest Author - Evanne Schmarder

Just outside the dusty speck of a desert town called Niland, CA is a colorful and remarkable tribute to one man’s passion. 23 years in the making and still a work in progress, Salvation Mountain shouts its message loud and clear – God is Love – even though its visionary creator is content to let each individual come to his or her own conclusion. The story of the mountain is at once complex and simple.

In 1984 Leonard Knight arrived at Slab City, a deserted military base where snowbirding RVers come to winter, with a heap of fabric that was intended as a hot air balloon with letters big as day proclaiming God is Love. No matter how he tried, the balloon wouldn’t fly. With plans to leave in one week Leonard still wanted to make some type of small statement. He found half a bag of cement and created a monument – coloring it with paint which he was fortunate enough to come across. One week turned into four years and the monument grew with the help of junk picked up at the local dump. Then disaster struck – the monument crumbled under the weight, heavy on unstable sand. Perhaps you or I would pack our belongings and call it a wonderful experiment but not Leonard. Instead, he saw it as a message from God, was thankful no one was hurt and proceeded to fashion what is known today as Salvation Mountain.

A 50-foot high mountain topped with a worn white cross greets visitors as they drive down bumpy, dusty Main Street. From afar it looks like a dizzying mish-mash of color but as you get closer you see the structure, the text, the waterfalls and the ornately decorated old vehicles – including a well-embellished Airstream Travel Trailer. Park and step out of your vehicle and Leonard will welcome you to his mountain and eagerly take you on a personal tour. Salvation Mountain is made of adobe, hay and plenty of paint (nearly 100 gallons – 10+ coats). Leonard collects chunks of clay rocks from the desert, soaks them in a front loader bucket until they liquefy (approximately five days), mixes it with hay and plasters it on the hillside or his latest find, on hay bales. Once dry he paints and decorates as the spirit moves him. Visitors – and there are plenty of them – 75-200 a day depending on the season – are invited to travel up the Yellow Brick Road to the top of the mountain and look down on the waterfalls and ocean shore – complete with a boat on the swells. Everywhere you look are words from the huge God is Love to the Lord’s Prayer to John 3:16.

Next to Salvation Mountain is Leonard’s latest project – The Museum – a balloon shaped “structure” constructed with hay bales, tree limbs, discarded vehicle windows and cables for strength. The first room you visit on the tour is the igloo – a place to cool down in the relentless desert heat. The room is decorated with clippings from the multiple articles that have been written about Leonard and his mountain. Also in the igloo are the trophies he and his prized dump truck won in their heyday. “Trees” dot the inside of the museum and are not only beautiful but ingenious, too. The trunks are made of found tires stacked on top of one another and filled with adobe. Once the core is dry the tires are covered with adobe, painted and decorated with flowers. Yes, adobe flowers of every color in the rainbow – and maybe more.

This truly inventive and amazing site, at one time thought to be an environmental hazard, is now famous the world over as a spectacular work of Folk Art. Salvation Mountain and its creator have been featured in Preservation (magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation), National Geographic, several newspapers and books, a sit-down on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings back in 2002, a Discovery Channel special and photos of the mountain reportedly hang in a military mess hall in Baghdad. Senator Barbara Boxer of California even entered Salvation Mountain into the Congressional Record as a National Treasure – something Leonard is very proud of. And if you imagined Leonard out of touch with technology you’d be wrong. Not too long ago Leonard and a local friend created a DVD of the tour he gives visitors and offers a free download on his personal Salvation Mountain website. He also hands out the DVD at the end of the tour. He told me, “The young kids are incredible in helping me get my message out - they burn the DVD and pass it out to their friends. The big churches, well, they’ve written me off. I just want to spread the word around the world - God is Love.”

It remains true that Leonard is a squatter – living in the back of one of the “repent-mobiles” (decorated trucks) with no power, water, etc. next to the mountain – and creating on land that belongs to the state – but with the recognition he and his work of art have received there’s little worry that Salvation Mountain will be asked to leave anytime in the near future. Whether you subscribe to his message or not, Leonard and his mountain inspire passion and a renewed belief in “anything is possible” and that in itself is a blessing.