Salvation Mountain

My goal this year was to make it to Salvation Mountain, here in Southern California. It took an entire day, but it was a lot of fun, an amazing piece of folk art and I am so happy to see it and climb it! The Mountain is made from adobe, straw, and thousands of gallons of lead-free paint. Salvation Mountain was created by artist, Leonard Knight (1931–2014). It encompasses numerous murals and areas painted with Christian sayings and Bible verses, though its philosophy was built around the Sinner's Prayer. It took many years for Leonard and after he discovered his faith, his  journey and art piece became a reality.

 

The Folk Art Society of America declared it "a folk art site worthy of preservation and protection in the year 2001. In an address to the United States Congress in 2002, California Senator Barbara Boxer described it as "a unique and visionary sculpture... a national treasure... profoundly strange and beautifully accessible, and worthy of the international acclaim it receives". 

It took Leonard Knight. 25 years of hard labor, an endless amount of adobe clay, 100,000+ gallons of paint, thousands of hay bales, a number of tires and car parts and one man with unwavering faith to build a mountain.