The hook
One man spent thirty years painting a hill in the desert, with half a million gallons of paint, to say as big as he could that God is love.
01Why it's worth it
Leonard Knight turned up near Niland in 1984, squatted at Slab City on the concrete pads of an abandoned Marine base, and started building a mountain. He made it from adobe and straw and junk, discarded tires and windows and car parts, and coated the whole thing in paint, thousands of gallons of it in every color, into a five-story, hundred-and-fifty-foot spread of hearts and flowers and painted waterfalls with GOD IS LOVE across the top. He worked on it until he no longer could, and died in 2014. The Folk Art Society called it worth preserving, and a US senator called it a national treasure that's "profoundly strange and beautifully accessible," which is exactly right. It's the purest piece of visionary folk art in the state, one man's single-minded thing, standing where California runs out of road beside the dying Salton Sea. Volunteers keep it painted now.
02How to experience it
It's outside Niland in Imperial County, near Slab City and the Salton Sea's east shore, a long way from anywhere: about two and a half hours from Palm Springs, and the better part of a day from either Los Angeles or the Bay. It's open dawn to dusk and free, though donated paint is literally what keeps it standing. Go in the cool months, and walk gently, because the surface is fragile adobe under all that color.