Slab City gets its name from concrete slabs that were poured to accommodate the infrastructure of Camp Dunlap, a Marine Corps facility used just before and during World War II. The camp was dismantled in 1956, but the slabs remained; the land was then transferred from the Department of Defense to the State of California. This abandoned land then became a hot spot for "squatters." Once of those was Leonard Knight, who created
Salvation Mountain, pictured below. This is a well-known and well-visited outsider art creation. (We first went there in the early 1990s, and we met and chatted with Mr. Knight. We took him some house paint, which is what he used to create the mountain.) It is quite beautiful...
The rest of Slab City--and we only saw the bits just off of the main road--is...interesting. There are no running water or sewage hook-ups, and it attracts people most kindly described as "eccentric."
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