Built on the concrete slabs of Camp Dunlap, an abandoned Marine training base, the settlement maintains its off-grid aspirations within the site's residual military perimeters and gridded street layout; off-grid is really in-grid. In a series of insightful texts and striking color photographs, Hailey and Wylie capture the texture of life in Slab City.
They show us Slab Mart, a conflation of rubbish heap and recycling center; signs that declare Welcome to Slab City , T'ai Chi on the Slabs Every morning , and Don't fuck around ; RVs in conditions ranging from luxuriously roadworthy to immobile; shelters cloaked in pallets and palm fronds; and the alarmingly opaque water of the hot springs.
At Camp Dunlap in the s, Marines learned how to fight a war. In Slab City, civilians resort to their own wartime survival tactics. Officially, it is a town that doesn't exist. Charlie Hailey : I heard about Slab City about 20 years ago when I started doing research for a dissertation on the practice of camping and visited Slab City for the first time. But it was really after Donovan and I started a conversation years later about some of our common interests that we came up with the idea to revisit it.
What were your initial thoughts upon arrival and how did the residents react when you got there? Hailey : One of the first things for me was the question of orientation. So I was constantly reorienting myself to the place. It was interesting to have informal conversations with the residents, but we were mostly ignored. There was a whole range of responses.
Donovan Wiley: Our motivation was to understand the structure of Slab City. We wanted to find the former perimeters of the military base, which made us sort of like archeologists and surveyors at the same time. We were interested in the constructive environment and how people were forming spaces of territory on this site. In some ways we became invisible, but we did engage with the community and had some interesting conversations.
Hailey : Since Slab City was previously a relatively large military installation, what really impresses me is the scale of the infrastructure. Ultimately the slabs themselves are that autonomous infrastructure that gave it its name.
We were fascinated with the idea of concrete on sand. Concrete is permanent in terms of architecture, and yet [the slabs] float on the sand. They really are invitations for settlement. The desert community tends to remain barren in the scorching summers but attracts some 2, snowbirds escaping chillier climates come winter. Year-round, about people call Slab City home.
Sometimes they call it The Slabs instead. There are no public utilities, so residents typically live in RVs and rely on solar power and generators.
For gasoline and provisions, residents can drive to the nearby town of Niland, which only has a population of about 1, In , the Navy Department set up a U. Marine Corps base on over acres in the Sonoran Desert. According to the Military Museum , they built about 30 structures, 8. The military buildings were torn down, and only the concrete slabs remained. Thus, those that would come to settle the area later began referring to it as Slab City.
The first people to live in Slab City may have been a group of workers hired to harvest creosote leaves in the s; they set up trailers in the area. Others soon followed, until Slab City became a known desert haven for curious and creative drifters, retirees, artists, dissenters, and others. The conditions might be harsh at times, but for some, eschewing the trappings of society for sun-bleached freedom is a fair trade.
One of the most notable landmarks of the community is Salvation Mountain. The massive, colorful sculpture was the years-long work of late artist Leonard Knight, who built it from adobe and straw.
East Jesus is an arts community where visitors will find a vast collection of assemblage art made from refuse and other re-purposed materials. These rules include a note about how, given the lack of sewage or plumbing in the area, human waste is composted. We and our partners use cookies to better understand your needs, improve performance and provide you with personalised content and advertisements.
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