A Mountain Man of High Art, Holy Ideas

At the end of a dusty road above the Salton Sea and the hot Niland desert, there is a man who lets a mountain speak on his behalf.

For the last 14 years, Leonard Knight has spent his days and nights painting a hillside in this sleepy town 80 miles southeast of Palm Springs. The suntanned desert dweller has turned what was once a dusty bluff into a multicolored mosaic he calls Salvation Mountain. On its side, he has painted a message: “God Is Love.”

“I figured I’d paint for a week or so and then I’d have to get a job,” says the 67-year-old artist who used to make his living doing odd jobs. “But I kinda got to liking it--waking up whenever I wanted, doing whatever I wanted and working for Jesus.”

Knight is not a religious zealot. He doesn’t even go to church. He’s a simple man who lives on a $200 Social Security check in the back of a converted 1951 dump truck that he’s painted to look like the hillside. He says God has given him a peace he never knew until he found him 30 years ago. And Knight says he wants to share God with everyone because he considers himself the happiest man in the world.

“ ‘Jesus, I’m a sinner. Please come upon my body and into my heart’--that’s the secret to the mountain,” Knight says of the sinner’s prayer that he has emblazoned on the hillside. “If one person reads it and finds God, I’m happy.”

Salvation Mountain hasn’t always been a happy place. Four years ago, the Imperial Valley Board of Supervisors declared the hillside an environmental hazard because of the paint. The board planned to have it bulldozed and hauled away to a toxic-waste dump.

An outcry from neighbors, the media and screenwriter-director Larry Yust (who made a documentary on the hillside) brought national attention to Knight’s artwork. And plans were halted when government officials declared the hill nontoxic.

Four years later, the mountain still stands, and Knight continues to make it bigger and better. He paints by sunlight and moonlight, making the flowers of the mountain brighter, the ocean bluer and his message, the words “God Is Love,” bigger.

For the hundreds of people who visit the mountain each month to bring Knight paint and see the Technicolor hillside, Knight has painted a yellow walkway to the mountaintop that is reminiscent of the Yellow Brick Road.

Next to Salvation Mountain, Knight is building an igloo out of adobe and straw so that he has a cool place to escape to when the summer heat climbs to 120 degrees. He’s also added a horseshoe pit that he uses when friends from neighboring Slab City--an abandoned Marine air base where snowbirds from the North park their RVs for the winter--stop by to visit.

“I didn’t know what to make of Leonard when I first met him,” says Yust, who collaborated on a book with Knight. “But he is undoubtedly the most honest and sincere man I’ve ever met.”

“Salvation Mountain, the Art of Leonard Knight” (New Leaf Press, 1998) features photos by Yust and a narrative by Knight that explains what he has done and what he still hopes to do.

“It’s a gimme mountain,” adds Knight, who couldn’t have painted it without the 40,000 gallons of paint that have been donated. “People give to the mountain and the mountain gives to them.”