Leonard Knight was born on November 1, 1931 just outside of Burlington, Vermont. He grew up on a 32-acre farm and went to school in a one-room schoolhouse. He didn’t really like school. Later he went to Shelburne High School, which had about 80 students. That was just too big for Leonard and he felt very uncomfortable there. Leonard says the kids teased and laughed at him. After his sophomore year, he dropped out. He went to work in a factory where his father was a foreman.

With the Korean War still going on, Leonard was drafted into the United States Army at the age of 20. The prospect of being able to see more of the world appealed to him. He received training as a tank mechanic however the war ended ten days after he arrived in Korea. After an Honorable Discharge from the Army, Leonard returned to Vermont and went to work at a car dealership in their body shop. Leonard started painting cars although, by his own admission, he wasn’t very good at it. He taught himself to play the guitar and began giving lessons to whomever would pay him.

In 1967 found Leonard back in San Diego visiting his sister Irene. She was always talking about the Lord and it sort of bothered Leonard. One morning to escape her sermonizing, Leonard went out of the house to sit in his van. To this day he really doesn’t know why, but he started repeating the Sinner Prayer - “Jesus, I’m a sinner, please come upon my body and into my heart.” It was on that Wednesday… at 10:30 in the morning… in his van… all by himself… at age 35… he accepted Jesus into his heart and he hasn’t been the same ever since. His passion has been unwavering. His dedication is intense.

Back in Vermont, his unbridled enthusiasm for the Lord, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost was mostly misunderstood. He went from church to church to share his newfound knowledge and always met resistance among the church leaders. Leonard’s idea was simple like it says in the Bible: accept Jesus into your heart, repent your sins, and be saved. The church leaders said it wasn’t that simple - that there was more to it than that. No one would listen to him. He couldn’t make anyone understand how simple he thought it all was.

Then, one day in 1970, a hot air balloon passed over Burlington. It caused quite a commotion. Everyone came outside to see what words were printed on the side of it. Leonard decided that a hot air balloon would be the perfect way to get people to see the Sinner’s prayer. For the next 10 years, he prayed for a hot air balloon. After a while, he realized that he would have to make it himself with no help from anyone else. On his way out West, Leonard’s van broke down in Nebraska. It was there, with a second-hand sewing machine given to him by a friend, he sewed relentlessly for years buying fabric when he could, raising money by cutting cord-wood, picking apples, or whatever odd jobs he could get. It became a wonderful patchwork of colors with big red letters proclaiming “God Is Love” on a field of white. Alas, his enthusiasm betrayed him. Over time, the balloon became much too big to manage and, after an endless amount of attempts to inflate it, the fabric and it’s stitching began to rot and fail.

Eventually, in 1984, Leonard found himself at work in Quartzite, Arizona changing tires on big-rig trucks. He traveled out to the Southern California desert to Niland and Slab City with his boss one weekend. Leonard liked the area (it wasn’t as cold as Nebraska or Vermont) and later returned with his van, balloon, home-built inflating furnace, and all. Try as he might, and with help from many of the local citizens, Leonard still could not get his balloon in the air. Each time it ripped, he’d repair it only to have it rip somewhere else. Finally… Leonard had to admit defeat. He felt like a failure. After 14 years of trying to promote his undying love for God, all he had to show for his efforts was an endless sea of rotted-out fabric colors spread at his feet.

After Leonard’s balloon refused to fly, he decided to leave the area, however he would stay one more week to make a “small statement” before he left. Armed with half of a bag of cement, he fashioned a small monument. One thing turned into another - days turned into weeks and weeks turned into years. Each day, Leonard would put a little more cement and a little more paint on the side of a forgotten riverbank. As his monument grew taller and taller, he would pack old junk he found at the dump onto the side of his “mountain,” fill it with sand and cover it with cement and paint. As cement was hard to come by, he would mix a lot of (too much) sand with it. Leonard’s mountain grew and grew - 30, 40, 50 feet and more. It was the same familiar patchwork of colors emblazoned with a big red “God Is Love” on a white background. Below that was the Sinners Prayer and a red heart. It was quite a spectacle out there in the middle of nowhere. 

One day after about four years of work, with the instability of all of that sand undermining it’s structure, the mountain fell down into a heap of rubble, sand, and weak cement. Instead of being discouraged, Leonard thanked the Lord for showing him that the mountain wasn’t safe. He vowed to start once again and to “do it with more smarts.” Leonard had been experimenting with the native adobe clay and had been using it on other parts of the mountain. Over the next several years, he rebuilt his mountain using adobe mixed with straw to hold it all together. It evolved into what it is today. As he fashions one part or another with clay, he coats it with paint. This keeps the wind and the rain from eroding it away. The more paint, the thicker the coat, the better and stronger it becomes. People come from all over with donations of paint. He uses it very liberally. Leonard estimates that he has put well over 100,000 gallons of paint on his mountain.

After ten years of relentless toil, Leonard and his mountain began to gain some notoriety. It was especially noticed by the Imperial County Supervisors. Salvation Mountain as it had come to be known, was at the entrance of Slab City (the Slabs), a community of “snowbirds” (visitors who live in the northern United States and Canada and travel to the warmer southern states for the winter) and local squatters occupying the old dismantled and abandoned Fort Dunlap World War II Marine training base. Only the concrete slabs of the barracks and Quonset huts remain. Because the land was government owned and because so many people were camping there without paying taxes or rent, the county thought it would start collecting a user fee. They also figured that there might be a conflict with a “religious monument” at the entrance to a county campground. So in July of 1994, their solution was to hire a toxic waste specialist to come out and take samples of the dirt around Leonard’s Mountain to test for “contaminants.” Even before the test results were back, they cordoned off the area and labeled it a “toxic nightmare.” The tests predictably came back claiming high amounts of lead in the soil. The county petitioned the state of California for funds to tear down the mountain and haul it away to a toxic waste disposal dumpsite in Nevada. 

Local residents, and snowbirds alike, did not see that as an option for Salvation Mountain and their friend Leonard. Hundreds and hundreds of signatures were collected on circulated petitions. Thanks to the help of many old and newfound friends, Leonard dug soil samples from the very same holes as the “expert” had used and submitted them to an independent lab in San Diego. No one was surprised when the new tests reveled that there were no unacceptable levels of any contaminants - especially lead - at Salvation Mountain. The mountain stands today as a reward to the determination of many and the tenacity of one.
In 1998, Leonard began experimenting with bales of straw and adobe. He got an idea to build a Hogan (the domed-shaped home of adobe and sticks used by the native Navajo) using bales of straw and adobe that would insulate him from the 115+°F (46°C) heat of the desert summers. He stacked the bales up to form a 10-foot high domed room. He covered the whole thing with adobe and painted and adorned it in his typical style. He never, however, moved into it still preferring to live in his truck. A few years after that, Leonard started the “Museum.” It is an incredibly ambitious project. It is modeled after his original semi-inflated hot-air balloon. When finished, it will include several large domed areas supported by “trees” that Leonard builds from old tires, wood scavenged from the surrounding desert, and, of course, adobe. It is his current work-in-progress.

The Mountain continually evolves. The blazing year-round sun, the wind, and the sand take its toll on the painted surfaces of Salvation Mountain. Patching and painting are constant necessities. Paint colors are limited to the paint that gracious people donate to him. He uses the “ugly colors” for patching and toughening. He saves the “pretty ones” for top coats and final decoration.
It is Leonard’s hope that his message of LOVE will be seen all over the world and that all people everywhere will show more love and compassion for their fellow man. He truly believes that love is the answer to a peaceful and harmonious existence.

The Folk Art Society of America declared Salvation Mountain “a folk art site worthy of preservation and protection” in the year 2000. In an address to the United States Congress on May 15, 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.”