"Shimmering in the dry desert heat east of the Salton Sea, Salvation Mountain seems like a mirage — the colossal vision of a man who is no longer there, built on land that was never his.
Leonard Knight spent almost 30 years out there, in a place without running water or electricity, creating a wildly colorful monument to God’s love. It’s an undulating mass of hand-painted adobe, three stories high and 100-feet wide, topped by a cross.
Next to the mountain is an igloo made out of hay bales and next to that a catacomb-like space with tree-shaped sculptures fashioned from discarded tires. Every surface, it seems, has seen the business end of a paint brush or roller. Religious slogans abound.
Knight turned Salvation Mountain into a folk-art legend, celebrated in museums, documentary films and a Congressional proclamation that calls it “a national treasure.” It made an appearance in one of Sue Grafton’s alphabet mysteries and the film “Into the Wild.” People travel from foreign countries just to see it in all its jaw-dropping glory.
Whenever he greeted visitors, up to 100 on some days, Knight would say that the mountain made him, not the other way around. He deflected any praise. He didn’t charge admission or sell key chains. It was never about him, he said.
Now it is.
Knight turns 81 on Nov. 1. The past two years have been hard, health-wise. His right leg was amputated above the knee a few months back. He’s been disoriented mentally. He’s living in a care home in El Cajon, and it seems unlikely he’ll ever return to his mountain. Not to stay, anyway.
In his absence, family and friends have put together a nonprofit organization and a nine-member board of directors to oversee the mountain’s future. A young couple from Oregon is camping on site, in a trailer, to keep vandals and thieves away. A Facebook page is up.
If all goes according to plan, a sponsorship program will pay for the ongoing maintenance required of a place that sits where summer temperatures routinely reach 105 and where flash floods sometimes wash out roads.
“Salvation Mountain is the world’s most obvious labor of love,” said Dan Westfall, a San Diegan who is president of the board. “We want it to remain as Leonard left it. We don’t want to change a thing.” (
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