Salvation Mountain Inc. continues Leonard Knight's vision

There's something haunting about Salvation Mountain.

The technicolor art installation in Niland on the outskirts of the Salton Sea attracts folk art enthusiasts and free spirits alike. But a closer look at the monument made of adobe, straw and thousands of gallons of paint reveals the unfinished work of a man who continues to inspire.

On Feb. 10, creator Leonard Knight died at age 82 at the Eldorado Care Center in El Cajon. He built the monument as a tribute to God — it was his home, his passion and his life's work.

Today, Knight's vision has been preserved by Salvation Mountain Inc., a group formed by supporters and friends in 2011. The nonprofit organization was set up as an official means to support and protect Knight's work. After his death, it assumed all caretaking duties. But now it faces logistical challenges Knight never foresaw, from maintenance to toxic substances to acquiring legal ownership.

'God is love'

"A lot of people in the valley just love me," Knight says in the 2007 Sean Penn-directed film, "Into the Wild." "Everybody now, I think, in the whole world is just loving me, and I just want to have the wisdom to love them back."

That philosophy was the foundation and inspiration for Salvation Mountain, which Knight began construction on in 1986.

"He wanted to testify really loud so that everyone could hear him," says "Builder" Bill Ammo, director of logistics and site-supervisor of Salvation Mountain Inc. "I'm not a religious man, but Leonard's faith and his picture of the world is so pure that you just have to catch in the feeling of it, even if you don't believe in the technicality of it."

Knight arrived in Southern California in the early 1980s. He was in his early 50s. According to Ammon, Knight wanted to pay tribute to God and had been working on a hot air balloon. But the balloon never took off, so Knight decided to build something.

"That's what brought him here to his place," Ammon says. "It was a place he could do this crazy thing and nobody could bother him. He wanted to do something that would catch people's eyes with his message … Somewhere he got the idea of making the mountain."

Modest at first, the mountain grew extensively to become the towering structure it is today. To help build and maintain it, Knight hired Ammon.

"I was poor. I had nothing, no income," Ammon recalls. He heard about Slab City, a makeshift town adjacent to the mountain populated with free spirits and drifters, a place where everyone was welcomed. At first Salvation Mountain was just a job to Ammon, but over time Knight became a friend. That was 15 years ago.

"The power of Leonard's personality and vision is what has people involved in this," Ammon says.

In 2008, Knight made another important friend. At the time, Knight was the sole resident at the mountain, constantly working on it and giving tours to visitors.

"Here was a guy that was really making what I thought was an extraordinary contribution," says Dan Westfall, president of Salvation Mountain Inc. "I started to witness how he operated and how he approached his work as far as spreading his message. I saw that it was really almost egoless, which is very rare. After a certain time, I started realizing that I was witnessing the purest ministry that I had ever seen."

Westfall, from San Diego, visited Salvation Mountain for the first time over Thanksgiving. He was so inspired that he returned twice the following year.

"I saw (Knight) periodically go over to a cooler," Westfall says. "He didn't have a refrigerator, he had an ice chest. He would go over and dig something out of that and munch on it. While he was giving a tour, I went over out of curiosity and looked in it. I saw various foods in various stages of decomposition, floating in water and covered with ants. I just couldn't stand it."

Westfall took time off from work and away from his wife to spend a couple weeks in the desert with Knight, acting as a sort of caretaker and promoter, inspiring others to extend their helping hands. Later that year, the late Kevin Eubanks arrived.

Eubanks would become Knight's right-hand man and protector. Westfall remembers a time when visitors were stealing from Knight, who had stashed donated money around the mountain. When he and Eubanks protested, disgusted by what people were doing, Knight brushed it off.

"He said, 'Sure they come around, but they haven't kept me from doing what I want to do, so quit worrying about it,' " Westfall says. "I watched him accept things and let things roll off his back and forgive people in ways that I couldn't understand."

Eubanks suffered a fatal heart attack in December 2011. But before he died he helped establish Salvation Mountain Inc.

Led by nine volunteer board members (currently eight with one vacant seat), Salvation Mountain Inc. was founded on Feb. 7, 2011. The nonprofit was set forth to preserve Knight's legacy. It created a caretaker program, where a volunteer lives on site for a period of time acting as security, maintenance and tour guide. The group also works to maintain Knight's philosophy. But the biggest challenge so far is the physical preservation of the mountain.

"We have a video that a filmmaker made with him and it's actually what we constitute as (Knight's) will, how he wanted things to be," says Ammon. "Sometimes it's contradictory, but we at least take it from Leonard's mouth."

The 90-minute interview features Knight talking about how he would like to see the mountain handled after his death. For the most part, Knight wanted to see the mountain completed. A back portion remains unfinished and vulnerable to the elements. While the organization would like to fulfill Knight's wish, according to Ammon, the job is dangerous and, with the rest of the mountain in need of repairs, not a priority.

Instead the group seeks to preserve the mountain as Knight had built it.

Utilizing historical photographs, the group organizes volunteer events to repair fallen areas. The mountain is made from a combination of clay and hay, forming an adobe. Knight sometimes added in logs, tires and other found objects, but he always covered the entire structure with a coat of paint. According to Ammon, it's the paint that protects it from water erosion, but intense sun exposure makes it a constant project.

"We took on efforts to bring it back to life the way he had originally painted it," says Westfall.

'We'll go from there'

With the establishment of the non-profit, Salvation Mountain has received enormous help outside of volunteer work. In 2013, the Los Angeles-based Annenberg Foundation awarded Salvation Mountain Inc. a grant of $32,000 to purchase equipment and materials for site enhancements that will improve security and strengthen operations. And according to Westfall, Frazee Paint in San Diego has also donated paint.

To further extend the life of Salvation Mountain, the organization is in negotiations to purchase the land on which the monument sits — 160 acres on what formerly was Camp Dunlap, a Marine Corps training facility established in 1942 to support World War II efforts. Once the war ended, the land was to be reverted back to state ownership. And in the early-1960s — two decades before Knight's arrival — that's exactly what happened. It remains unclear whether Knight realized he was building his mountain on state-owned land.

Salvation Mountain Inc.'s attempt to purchase the land, "is giving us a chance to determine our future," Westfall says.

The land purchase application was submitted earlier this year and is currently being processed, according to Jim Porter, public lands management specialist at California Lands Commission. One of the processing procedures is the clearing of toxic substances on site in coordination with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.

"We just recently entered into a contract with the Department Of Substance Control to do a preliminary, kind of desktop review of existing issues, known conditions that the department can discover through basic file reviews," Porter said. "And they're going to put together a report for us. When we get that report and review it, then we'll have a better idea of what we're dealing with."

Porter says the concern about toxic substances stems from paint cans on site.

"In talking with the agent, it's my understanding that the issue is not so much the paint contamination, because they use more latex paint rather than lead based anyway, but they're more concerned about the empty paint cans," Porter says. "My understanding is those cans have been removed. Although, I don't know that for a fact. The folks down there said they would take care of that issue.

"At this point, we're waiting for a report from the Department of Toxic Substance Control to give us a better understanding of what we're looking at and we'll go from there."

According to Russ Edmondson, media information officer at DTSC and the California Environmental Protection Agency, his departments have conducted the two studies.

The Certified Unified Program Agency, responsible for implementing a unified hazardous materials and hazardous waste management regulatory program, tested paint chips that had broken away from "the painted mound that is Salvation Mountain" on March 28. "The results of the analysis do not show hazardous waste," Edmonson wrote in an email correspondence.

The CUPA also met with the non-profit organization on June 24 to observe the conditions of the paint maintenance as a product and as a waste. "The inspection showed no violations for what was observed in the Conex box, where the product paint is stored," Edmonson wrote.

Edmonson also wrote that his department is currently waiting for agreements to be signed by the State Lands Commission to perform further tests.

"DTSC will perform a Phase 1 and 2 site assessment once the State Lands Commission returns a signed agreement," he wrote.

When asked about the agreement, Sheri Pemberton, chief external affairs/legislative liaison of the California Lands Commission, wrote, "My understanding is that we have not contracted for a phase one and two with DTSC. We have only contracted for a preliminary desk file review of the potential contamination issues on the site there. We expect to order some additional reports further down the line, but at this point that is all we can contract for, primarily due to budget contracts."

So, for now, the status of the land purchase application remains "processing."

"It's a very complex issue and there are many aspects of it that we still have to investigate," Porter says.

And, for now, Salvation Mountain waits.

Salvation Mountain close-ups

Leonard Knight and Salvation Mountain have made several on the big and small screen. Here are just a few:

"Tennis, Anyone...?" (2005): A comedy about two Hollywood losers trying to make it big by way of celebrity tennis tournaments. The mountain is featured throughout the movie and Knight makes an appearance.

"Into the Wild" (2007): The real-life story of seeker Christopher McCandless, who arrived in Slab City in 1991 where he met Knight. Knight makes an appearance in the film showing actors Emile Hirsch, who plays McCandless, and Kristen Stewart, who plays Tracy Tatro, around Salvation Mountain.

"The Love Story of Leonard Knight" (2013): An indie short film dedicated to Salvation Mountain and Knight. The documentary features Knight and a number of his friends, including long-time caretaker Kevin Eubanks, talking about Knight's message: "God is love." The film has screened at a number of festivals, winning the documentary section at the Gideon Film Festival.