To this jaded New Yorker, California has no shortage of breathtaking views. Hell, just the sight of lawns in Los Angeles are enough to make you drool, never mind the palm trees and the ocean. But the sun-drunk glamour of Los Angeles doesn’t even come close to the weird, otherworldly beauty of Slab City, an unincorporated speck in the corner of the state. Just 45 miles from Mexico and 90 from Arizona, it is a world away from LA. Slab City is where people go to escape society, and there are a lot of people here.
The Slabs started life as Camp Dunlap, a World War II-era Marine base where they tested bombs. By the mid-'50s, the government had closed the base and ordered that the buildings be demolished, leaving behind their concrete foundations, the slabs. By the mid-'60s, the restless found this empty base and turned it into a new Eden, albeit one with no running water, electricity, bathrooms and garbage collection. Still, RVs and campers started showing up by the hundreds, and soon the Slabs became a haven for hippies, outlaws and artists. A lot of them never left.
So you take the 10 West out of Los Angeles, preferably early in the morning, and just keep going. Go past glitzy Palm Springs and hip Coachella to Route 111, or Grapefruit Boulevard. It’s a desert highway that looks straight out of an old Roadrunner cartoon, except the first few miles are irrigated, and there are acres and acres of grapefruit farms. The incredible citrus smell stays long after the groves disappear. Next come the windmills. Silently arcing by the hundreds, they look like bleached manmade redwoods against the mountains. Then comes the Salton Sea, a salt lake where nothing grows, the beaches are covered in the bones of long-dead fish, and the salt hangs like a vail in the otherwise endless sky. Make a left in Niland, and three miles past the burned out Roman-columned bank, Salvation Mountain appears.
In the '80s, Leonard Knight, a Korean War vet with a wild religious streak moved into a ’53 Chevy truck at the Slabs and built Salvation Mountain, a bizarre and astonishing monument made out of hay, adobe, and layers of Day-Glo latex paint. Like a giant Candy Land board in the middle of the desert, Salvation Mountain radiates against the rust-colored soil and fried scrub brush. Just beyond it are the psychedelic murals on the remains of the base’s water tanks, and the hot springs, where the water stays at 100 degrees year round.
Today, snowbirds, drifters, vacationing families, and Mad Max-fetishizing punks are visiting, taking pictures, and talking with the locals. The citizens of the Slabs couldn’t be friendlier. There’s still no electricity, water, or bathroom, but there is a cafe, library, bar, and radio station, all solar, wind, or propane powered. Slab City is like nowhere else on earth, yet it is so incredibly, palpably California. You can’t make it up and you can’t have it anywhere else—you just need to be there and see it.
Read more summer travel stories HERE
![]()
Salvation Mountain, Leonard Knight's life-size Candy Land board. Photos by James Derek Sapienza
![]()
The scenic Salton Sea.
![]()
Life in Slab City hasn't changed in five decades. There are re
The Slabs started life as Camp Dunlap, a World War II-era Marine base where they tested bombs. By the mid-'50s, the government had closed the base and ordered that the buildings be demolished, leaving behind their concrete foundations, the slabs. By the mid-'60s, the restless found this empty base and turned it into a new Eden, albeit one with no running water, electricity, bathrooms and garbage collection. Still, RVs and campers started showing up by the hundreds, and soon the Slabs became a haven for hippies, outlaws and artists. A lot of them never left.
So you take the 10 West out of Los Angeles, preferably early in the morning, and just keep going. Go past glitzy Palm Springs and hip Coachella to Route 111, or Grapefruit Boulevard. It’s a desert highway that looks straight out of an old Roadrunner cartoon, except the first few miles are irrigated, and there are acres and acres of grapefruit farms. The incredible citrus smell stays long after the groves disappear. Next come the windmills. Silently arcing by the hundreds, they look like bleached manmade redwoods against the mountains. Then comes the Salton Sea, a salt lake where nothing grows, the beaches are covered in the bones of long-dead fish, and the salt hangs like a vail in the otherwise endless sky. Make a left in Niland, and three miles past the burned out Roman-columned bank, Salvation Mountain appears.
In the '80s, Leonard Knight, a Korean War vet with a wild religious streak moved into a ’53 Chevy truck at the Slabs and built Salvation Mountain, a bizarre and astonishing monument made out of hay, adobe, and layers of Day-Glo latex paint. Like a giant Candy Land board in the middle of the desert, Salvation Mountain radiates against the rust-colored soil and fried scrub brush. Just beyond it are the psychedelic murals on the remains of the base’s water tanks, and the hot springs, where the water stays at 100 degrees year round.
Today, snowbirds, drifters, vacationing families, and Mad Max-fetishizing punks are visiting, taking pictures, and talking with the locals. The citizens of the Slabs couldn’t be friendlier. There’s still no electricity, water, or bathroom, but there is a cafe, library, bar, and radio station, all solar, wind, or propane powered. Slab City is like nowhere else on earth, yet it is so incredibly, palpably California. You can’t make it up and you can’t have it anywhere else—you just need to be there and see it.
Read more summer travel stories HERE
Salvation Mountain, Leonard Knight's life-size Candy Land board. Photos by James Derek Sapienza
The scenic Salton Sea.
Life in Slab City hasn't changed in five decades. There are re