Between the Salton Sea and Slab City, in the heart of the Colorado Desert, California, is the life’s work of one man that has drawn visitors and inspired a striking scene in the 2007 film “Into The Wild.” Salvation Mountain is an art installation that was continuously maintain by its creator, Leonard Knight, until he was committed to a nursing facility for dementia. Bales of hay, covered in adobe form the desert hill into a colorful mountain. Knight embedded car doors, figurines, branches, into the structure and covered it all with thousands of gallons of paint.
Salvation Mountain stands in colorful and striking opposition to the desert dunes that surround it.
While an untraditional, self taught artist with a chaotic work, Knight and Salvation Mountain has become more than a road side attraction. In 2000, The Folk Art Society of America declared Salvation Mountain a “a folk art site worthy of preservation and protection.” Two years later, in 2002, California Senator Barbara Boxer joined in the praise, describing it as “a unique and visionary sculpture… a national treasure… profoundly strange and beautifully accessible, and worthy of the international acclaim it receives”.
Inside of Salvation Mountain, painted tree branches intertwine above visitors’ heads.
Today, visitors still clamber along Knight’s yellow brick road as conservationists struggle to manage it’s continual need for upkeep. Yet, so long as the mountain stands, Knight will continue to witness his candy colored philosophy to visitors, even after his death.
Knight invites visitors to travel the “yellow brick road” to the peak of the mountain.
Related Film Permits
- Film permits filed for “Into The Wild” by Into The Wild LLC and Into The Wild
- View nearby film locations in Riverside County: [https://thefilmlocations.com/usa/california/riverside-ca065]