Slab City

Slab City California

by Wikipedia

Slab City, also called The Slabs, is an unincorporated, off-the-grid alternative lifestyle community consisting largely of snowbirds in the Salton Trough area of the Sonoran Desert, in Imperial County, California. It took its name from concrete slabs that remained after the World War II Marine Corps Camp Dunlap training camp was torn down. Slab City is known for attracting people who want to live outside mainstream society.

Slab City's popularity surged after an article was printed in Trailer Life and RV Magazine around 1984. A 1988 San Diego Reader reports there were no more than 600–700 RVs around 1983, and one resident estimated there were about 2000 trailers when he was interviewed in March, 1988.

Leonard Knight, an early settler who created the Salvation Mountain art installation, was featured in Sean Penn's Into the Wild, released in 2007. An obituary of Knight stated that he "spent almost 30 years building the colorful mountain ... Built out of adobe and donated paint, Knight worked on the mountain all day, every day. He even slept at the mountain's base in the back of a pick-up truck, with no electricity or running water".

An article in Smithsonian magazine in October 2018 referred to the community as a "Squatters’ Paradise" which locals consider to be "one of America's last free places." The article said of the population: "There are clearly people there who don’t want to be found, so there’s something about disappearing, and the desert offers that kind of opportunity."

Popular Articles

by INDEPENDENT

The exercise at least four times more efficient than walking

Photographing Slab City, California’s off-grid drifter community

by Eve Watling 27/7/20 INDEPENDENT

British photographer Matt Stuart spent five months in Slab City, a ramshackle California desert community. His new book, ‘Into the Fire’, is an intimate portrait of life lived in ‘the last free place in America’

Will Salvation Mountain find its savior? The quest to save the desert folk-art landmark

by Chris Iovenko 27/1/17 Los Angeles Times

People call it a mountain, but it’s just 150 feet across and five stories tall, jutting skyward like a candy-colored, Jesus-inspired hallucination brought to life on the subdued pastel palette of the desert. Created in a sustained fever dream by the self-taught artist Leonard Knight over nearly three decades, Salvation Mountain rose as a monument to individual fortitude and artistic.

Life in Slab City

by Reuters 7/3/12

Located on a former military base, Slab City, California is a place on the fringe both geographically and philosophically.

The Slab City Snowbirds : On This Stretch of Desert, Modest Campers Line Up Next to the Sleekest Highway Luxury Liners

by CHRIS HODENFIELD 30/3/1986 Los Angeles Times

Just because she had to give up almost everything she owned didn’t mean that Evelyn Bartlett was going to get rid of her two poodles, 15-pound cat and one-legged parakeet. She packed them up for her new life on the road. She now has them with her in Slab City.

Portraits From Slab City: 'The Last Free Place On Earth'

by Jordan G. Teicher 3/10/12 npr

People come to Slab City, a squatter campsite in the Colorado Desert in southeastern California, for many reasons. But one sentiment seems to unite many of them: They want to avoid people like photojournalist Jessica Lum. That is: City people. Taxpayers. Media types.

SLAB CITY: This Abandoned Military Base In The Middle Of The Desert Is Home To Americans Looking To 'Get Off The Grid'

by Robert Johnson 6/2/12 BUSINESS INSIDER

There are about 150 year-round residents called "Slabbers" who brave the 120 degree summer heat, on the border of Mexico, with no electricity or running water. The number of dwellers swells in the winter as "snowbirds" arrive to take advantage of the free RV parking and laid back lifestyle.

Unlikely nomads: Senior single women take up life on the road

by Randy Dotinga 30/3/04 The CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITIR

When Charlotte Hagemann, a pumpkin decorator from New Jersey, rumbles into Slab City in her motor home each winter she sets up next to Carl Gross - a sturdy World War II veteran and her high school sweetheart.

The oasis of the Salton Sea

by Danica Creahan 1/3/17 Los Angeles Times

Miles past the glamor of Palm Springs and the comfort of well-developed civilization, there is a place that remains off the grid. What used to be a marine training camp called “Camp Dunlap” is now the “Last Free Place,” Slab City.

Severe drought marks California landscape

by Reuters

Views of the California landscape, dotted with artificial lakes, golf courses, shrinking water reservoirs and vast agricultural fields, amid the state's worst drought since 1977.

The 6-year-old photographer with more than 200,000 Instagram followers shares shots of the best trips he's taken with his dad

by Sarah Jacobs 29/3/16 BUSINESS INSIDER

For the Huey family, the rules of a road trip are simple: take the back roads, eat at local restaurants, find a good place to spend the night before dark — and of course, take a ton of photographs for their combined 900,000 Instagram followers.

The Town That Doesn’t Exist

by Sarah Holder 9/10/18 Bloomberg

Deep in the heart of California’s Colorado Desert, a few hundred nomads have carved out a quiet life amid the sand. They’re uncountable by any real census, because their population changes every season. They’re unattached—living there because they’re escaping from something, or in search of something else. What they’ve all found is a place called Slab City.