Salvation Mountain

Article and photography by Natasha Petrosova


"Love Jesus and keep it simple"
Leonard Knight  ( November 1, 1931- February 10, 1914)

Salvation mountain is an installation made of adobe, straw and thousands of gallons of paint.  It was created by late Leonard Knight, an outsider artist, who wanted to spread one simple message - "God is Love and God Loves Everyone".   Salvation Mountain located in Colorado Desert near Niland, CA. It stands by toxic water of Salton Sea  and points the entrance to a  "Trailer Park Utopia" - Slab City.
"In 1966, Knight quit his job and set out to wander across the country in a 1951 Chevrolet truck as a self-proclaimed "hobo bird." Knight was sustained by deep religious convictions when his truck broke down in Nebraska, he stopped traveling and yielded to a vision of creating the world's largest hot air balloon, with the words "God Is Love" painted on the side. He spent ten years building the two hundred foot tall balloon, then packed it into a trailer and left for California, possessed with the idea of displaying a religious message that could be seen for miles."  Leonard arrived to California abandoned military base Camp Dunlap that was transformed into a Slab City with over 5000 residents who lived there rent free in tents or recreational vehicles .   Slab City residents welcomed Leonard like one of their  own and allowed him to continue working on his giant balloon.  When the day came for the first fly, Leonard noticed that balloon was too big and heavy to inflate.  The nylon material also started to rot under hot desert sun.  After his failure to fly a balloon Leonard's hope to display the giant words was thwarted until he  noticed a massive hump of soft stone and dried clays outside the entrance to Slab City. The hill, which he will later  name "Salvation Mountain" .  Leonard started  this project in 1985 and continued working on it for nearly 30 years.  In 2002, Senator Barbara Boxer entered Salvation Mountain to a congressional record as a national treasure and in 2007, film director/actor Sean Penn featured Leonard Knight in his movie "Into the Wild" where Leonard Knight plays himself.  Thousands of people, artists, reporters, photographers from all over the world visit Salvation Mountain each year.  Leonard Knight passed away two years ago at the age of 82.  Unfortunately he is no longer able to be there and greet the visitors.  With Leonard being gone , Salvation Mountain starting to show signs of aging: The color fades and infrastructure is getting destroyed by blistering sun, storms and floods. Leonard's supporters and friends are trying to get help to restore it by collecting donations and asking for volunteers.


References:

Leonard Knight.  http://www.avam.org/our-visionaries/leonard-knight.shtml

Leonard knight , creator of Salvation Mountain ( November 1, 1931- February 10, 1914):  photo courtesy http://alfa-img.com/show/leonard-knight.html

A room insight Salvation Mountain        

A passage insight Salvation Mountain

Installation by Leonard Knight near Salvation Mountain

Leonard's art car installation outside of salvation mountain 

a passage inside Salvation Mountain 

A room inside Salvation Mountain 

 Installation outside Salvation Mountain 

 A boat, Leonard Knight's installation 

 A passage inside Salvation Mountain 

Salvation Mountain from the distance 

Bombay Beach

Article and photography by Natasha Petrosova

Bombay Beach, was established in the 1940s and 50s, as the Salton Sea region 

became a playground for rich and powerful.  The city was on course to 

become Southern California’s own French Riviera, but the steady rise of salinity in

 the Salton Sea led to problems, like massive fish and wildlife deaths. In the 

1970s, a series of tropical storms ruined most of the beach city, and it never 

recovered. Shorefront homes, businesses, and resorts were flooded several 

times, before the water finally settled in the 1980s. Today, most of the city stands 

in ruins, making Bombay Beach visually striking and dramatic. Despite its 

downfall, some residents refused to go, and still gladly live in this semi-ghost

 town.

      I visited the only restaurant for miles around, the Ski Inn, owned by Bombay 

Beach residents, Jane and Wendell Southworth. The Southworths have lived here

 their entire lives, and still remember the city’s mid-60s heyday. Getting ready to 

retire, they recently put their restaurant up for sale. I asked Jane about swimming

 in the Salton Sea, and she said there is nothing at all wrong with the water, 

where she swims daily. In fact, she believes that the water is healing, and 

removes toxins from her skin, keeping it moisturized, clean, and refreshed. 

The couple agreed that Salton Sea tilapia tastes better that any tilapia found in 

the supermarket, however, while taking pictures at Bombay Beach’s shoreline, I 

saw many dead fish, mostly tilapia. Some of the fish floated, while others washed 

up on the shore. Although the July heat made it tempting, I chose not to swim. If 

the water killed all those fish, then swimming might not be the best idea for me.

The sign of Ski Inn Restaurant

Ski Inn Restaurant

Inside Ski Inn Restaurant

Wendell and Jane Southeworth , the owners of Ski Inn and full time residents of Bombay Beach.  

A visitor tapes a dollar bill on the wall of Ski Inn restaurant

Ruins of Shorefront homes in Bombay Beach

Inside the abandoned house

the Living Room

Children room

Ups, left the toy behind 

Living Room

the view

Ruins of shorefront home

Salton Sea

Salton Sea Shore

Article and photography by Natasha Petrosova 


We were preparing for our trip to Salton Sea area.  Our final destination was Salvation Mountain and Slab City.  But abandoned cities by salton sea  and dead sea itself certainly draw our attention to stop and investigate the area.  We decided to avoid a freeway and get to the area through Joshua Tree National Park.  We cut across Joshua Tree National  park left Mojave desert and came out in Colorado desert right by Salton Sea.  As soon as we reached the area i noticed a strange and unpleasant  smell. The area had post apocalyptic look  with the surrounding structures standing in ruins.  The sea was the dull blue of a cataract, surrounded by small volcanoes, bubbling mud pots, and ragged, blank mountains used for bombing practice by the Navy and the Marines .  It was hard to imagine that once upon the time this area was known to be a paradise , "a germ in a desert ".  What happened here ?  why this area that was once flourishing with tourists, new constructions, yacht clubs and  hotels is now deserted and crumbling  ? To understand how this place turned from paradise to purgatory we need to know Salton Sea story.

Salton Sea is the most enigmatic areas in Southwest .  It is a largest lake in California. It lands between Palm Springs resorts and Mexican border.  Salton Sea came into being in 1905.  "It was an accident stemming from a canal that diverted water from the Colorado River to the agricultural area of the Imperial Valley. There was an overflow, an unplanned change of course, and an inland sea was born. The tributary to the Salton Sea continued fill the fledgling lake, eroding the banks of other nearby lakes, and soon sucking them away, quickly filling the new lake with the liquidy remains". By 1906 it was a fully fledged lake, and surveyors noted that several species of waterfowl and pelicans were nesting in the area. The lake continued to grow until Union Pacific closed the river breach, and cut off the tributary.  By 1950 salton sea area was booming .  It was a California version of "French rivera" , the area  quickly became a playground for rich and powerful.  The area used to have numerous luxury resorts, hotels, piers , yacht and thousand of visitors including celebrities like Frank Sinatra.  It was a same year 1950 when  California Department of Fish and Game made a concerted effort to stock the Salton Sea with fish.  Thousands were captured with large nets in the Gulf of California, and quickly released into the Sea.   The Salton Sea quickly became a fisherman’s paradise.  With all these new fish to eat, The Sea also became a new stopover point for migratory birds.  As California built cities on its coastal marshlands, the Salton Sea became a critical part of the Pacific Flyway, part time home to millions of birds.

"By the late 1960s the Sea was beginning a metamorphosis.  Rather than evaporating like a puddle in a parking lot as it had done over and over since prehistory, this time the Salton Sea stayed the same size.  As it turned out, the Imperial Valley farms were dumping irrigation runoff water into the sea at the same rate as evaporation–about 6 feet a year.  Unfortunately, salt and fertilizer don’t evaporate, so as the chemical-laden water from the farms poured into the basin, they combined with the already saline mixture of the Sea.  Since the Salton Sea has no outlet, the salt and chemical levels increased every year while the water level remained the same.  The Salton started to get murkier and murkier".

Then a cycle of bad things began.  The first was the algae that fed on the fertilizer in the run-off.  The vast, but short lived, algae fields created an enormous amount of rotten smelling, decaying matter as a natural part of its life cycle.  The stench, combined with the oppressive heat, was, and still is, completely overpowering.  Anyone with a sense of smell was forced to move away from the shoreline. Then came the floods.  "Tropical storm Kathleen pounded the Imperial Valley in 1976 with record-setting rainfall, and the water had no place to go except the Salton Sink.  In 1977, Tropical storm Doreen blew through the Imperial Valley, the second “100-year storm” in two years".  Floodwaters consumed the marinas and yacht clubs along the Sea’s shoreline. With its main income stream cut off, the local economies quickly collapsed and property values plummeted.  By the mid-’80s, the cities around the Sea were barely hanging by a thread. Whole flooded neighborhoods were just abandoned, and left to rot.

By the late 1980s, the wildlife die-offs began.  "First, the fish began dying in biblical numbers when the all-consuming algae depleted the oxygen from the water.  Feeding on the rotting fish, the birds contracted botulism.  Almost every year through the nineties, tens of thousands of dead fish and birds washed up on the shore of the Salton Sea.  When 150,000 Eared Grebes died in 1992, it was a disaster that completely overwhelmed the facilities of the Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge.  Their disposal incinerator ran 24 hours a day for months. The much smaller Brown Pelican die-off of the late nineties received massive media exposure and brought the plight of the Salton Sea into living rooms all across America.  In the summer of 1999, 7.6 million Tilapia died from oxygen starvation caused by the overabundant algae.  Their rotting carcasses rimmed parts of the Sea for over ten years. Combined with the decaying algae, it had to be smelled to be believed".

These days, in the 115-degree heat of summer the Sea stinks so bad that the reek sticks in your throat like Elmer’s Glue. Chemical-laced dust kicked up from its rapidly receding shoreline contributes to an asthma rate for local children three times higher than the state average. In the recent years because Salton Sea started shrinking and evaporating rapidly that will soon represent even e bigger health problem in Riverside county, Imperial Valley and even Los Angeles.  It is predicted that the shoreline will recede by  up to several miles, leaving at least 21,120 acres of sediments to the mercy of hot, dry winds.  Salton Sea mud contains enough arsenic and selenium to qualify for disposal in a dump reserved for the most toxic of society's trash. Chromium, zinc, lead and pesticides, including DDT, are also in the lake bottom.  The Salton Sea, the largest lake in California, encompasses about 380 square miles. It rests in one of the driest places in the nation. Gale-force winds are not uncommon.  
These toxic chemicals could attach themselves to the fine particles of sediment when the lake evaporates and be able to travel far with wind driven dust and  breathed by people. It believed that it could  potentially be a health hazard.

Presently there are a number of ambitious plans to try to save the Salton Sea. Birds still flock there, unaware of the dangerous chemicals of the water. Most people avoid it. It’s become so polluted that it’s a danger to eat anything that comes from it, and it’s a wildlife preserve.

Salton Sea have  been variously called a natural wonder, a national embarrassment, paradise, and the ecological equivalent of the Chernobyl disaster. And it’s only a hundred years old.



references:

Desert USA:  http://www.desertusa.com/salton/salton.html

Salton Sea :the Assessment by Victor M. Ponce:   http://saltonsea.sdsu.edu

Sordid history of the Salton Sea, by Jason Bellows: https://www.damninteresting.com/sordid-history-of-the-salton-sea/

Salton Sea : From Relaxing resort to Skeleton - Filled Wasteland , by Ella Morton: http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/02/04/the_salton_sea_in_california_turned_from_a_relaxing_resort_to_an_apocalyptic.html

Lost America: The Salton Sea: http://lostamerica.com/photo-items/the-salton-sea/

The Salton Sea: Death and Politics in the Great American Water Wars by Matt Simon:  http://www.wired.com/2012/09/salton-sea-saga/

The Shore of Salton Sea 

The Pelicans

 The Shore

Dead Tilapia in a water

Dead tilapia at the shore

 dead fish in a water

Pelicans