Slab City’s Salvation Mountain

Dr. Jordan Tourtelot Perzik earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Pacifica Graduate University; he holds a master’s degree in the same field from Antioch University, and a bachelor’s degree in film and television from Boston University. An accomplished professional psychologist and marriage and family therapist, he leads his eponymous life coaching service Jordan Perzik, Ph.D. Active in the conservation and arts communities, Dr. Perzik worked and painted with pop culture icon Leonard Knight, who built Salvation Mountain in Slab City, California.

Slab City is an alternative lifestyle community near the town of Niland on the Salton Sea. Named for the slabs of concrete it rests on, which are all that’s left of a US Marine base, it has a year-round population of between 50 and 100 that swells to several thousand during the winter months, with most of the transient population escaping the cold further north. Lacking many of the amenities of modern American communities like electricity and running water, its residents rely on a pioneer spirit to get by.

Leonard Knight was a Korean War veteran who had an intense Christian conversion experience in 1967 which left him burning to share a simple message with the world: “God is Love.” In 1980 he traveled west from his home in Vermont with the vision of creating the world’s largest hot-air balloon bearing the message “God is love.”

Knight’s efforts to sew together a massive balloon failed, though, and when he reached Slab City in 1984, he was ready to settle down and try a different approach; he built a mountain of sand, cement, and junk upon which he painted his message, as well as a prayer and a collection of Bible verses. After that mountain collapsed in 1988, Knight built a second mountain observing more reliable techniques and materials, and that mountain, now more than three stories tall, remains today, decorated with hundreds of thousands of gallons of paint and maintained by volunteers since Knight’s passing in 2014. More information about Leonard Knight and his creation is available online at SalvationMountain.org.