Slab City or The Slabs (located at 33°15′32″N 115°27′59″W / 33.25889°N 115.46639°W / 33.25889; -115.46639) is a snowbird campsite in the Colorado Desert in southeastern California, used by recreational vehicle owners and squatters from across North America. It takes its name from the concrete slabs that remain from the abandoned World War II Marine barracks of Camp Dunlap.
Several thousand campers, many of them retired, use the site during the winter months. These "snowbirds" stay only for the winter, before migrating north in the spring to cooler climates. The temperatures during the summer are unforgiving (105,110 and as high as 120 degrees F); nonetheless, there is a group of around 150 permanent residents who live in the Slabs all year round. Some of these "Slabbers" derive their living by way of government checks (SSI and Social Security and Social Security Disability) and have been driven to the Slabs through poverty. Others have moved to The Slabs to learn how to live off the grid and to be left alone. Still others have moved there to stretch their retirement income.
The site is both decommissioned and uncontrolled, and there is no charge for parking. The camp has no electricity, no running water, no sewers nor toilets, and no trash pickup service. Many campers use generators or solar panels to generate electricity. Supplies can be purchased in nearby Niland, California, located about four miles (5 km) to the southwest of Slab City.
There is a short online documentary by Vice (magazine).
Read more about Slab City: In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words slab and/or city:
“Remember? We sat on a slab of rock.
From this distance in time,
it seems the color
of iris, rotting and turning purpler,
but it was only
the usual gray rock”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“Arrive at New Orleans, a city of ships, steamers, flatboats, rafts, mud, fog, filth, stench, and a mixture of races and tongues. Cholera, “some.” [At] Planters’ Hotel. Mem:—Never get caught in a cheap tavern in a strange city.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)