Camp Dunlap: The World War II Base Beneath Slab City

The name Slab City contains a piece of history. The slabs are the concrete floors of a military camp whose buildings disappeared after World War II. What remained helped another kind of community take shape.

East of Niland, near the Salton Sea, Camp Dunlap trained Marines for war. Its later dismantling left a landscape that people could occupy and adapt. Understanding that sequence changes how you see the place: beneath its improvised shelters and individual expressions are traces of an earlier, carefully organized settlement.

Where was Camp Dunlap?

Camp Dunlap stood about three miles east of Niland, on the eastern side of the Salton Sea region in Imperial County. It is part of the wider desert story that connects with the Coachella Valley, although the camp itself was in Imperial Valley. Niland’s historical marker places the former base in the landscape now associated with Slab City. [1]

For the broader setting, explore our Salton Sea resources. The camp belongs to that region’s military history, alongside the very different stories of agriculture, wildlife, and shoreline recreation.

Why the Marines came to this desert

In 1941, Marine planners were looking for a West Coast site where field artillery and antiaircraft units could train. San Diego’s busy skies limited high-angle gunfire. An inland desert range offered room to practice.

The Navy’s construction history records work beginning in March 1942 and finishing that November. It describes a tent camp intended for four artillery battalions and one defense battalion, positioned at the southern end of a much larger range area. [2]

Camp Dunlap was commissioned on October 15, 1942. It honored Brigadier General Robert Henry Dunlap. The California military history account identifies the developed headquarters and cantonment site as approximately 631 acres. [3]

A tent camp with the infrastructure of a town

A temporary military camp still needed dependable services. Historical accounts describe water treatment and distribution, sewage systems, paved streets, fuel storage, and recreation facilities, including a swimming pool. Those investments explain why the site left more substantial traces than rows of vanished tents. [3]

The Niland marker highlights the 12th Marines, the artillery regiment of the 3rd Marine Division. Under Colonel John B. Wilson, the regiment trained here before departing for Auckland, New Zealand, in January 1943. Its later combat campaigns included Bougainville, Guam, and Iwo Jima. This quiet desert site was one stop in a journey that led across the Pacific. [1]

How the camp disappeared—and where its lumber went

The camp’s end was a process. California’s 2015 environmental review describes wartime deactivation in 1945 and approval to dismantle and remove buildings in 1946. A military history account describes personnel remaining after the war and dismantling continuing into the 1950s. These accounts describe different stages, making a single “closed” date misleading. [3, 4]

The environmental review also preserves a less familiar detail: salvaged lumber was reused around Imperial Valley, including in Westmorland motels and a Niland church, homes, and farm structures. Parts of the camp’s material history continued beyond its boundaries. [4]

How Camp Dunlap became Slab City

The Department of Defense conveyed the Slab City parcel back to California in 1961. Concrete foundations remained. The State Lands Commission records the site’s gradual emergence as a destination for campers and other occupants; its historical review describes a residential community developing by the mid-1960s. [4, 5]

The floors offered firm surfaces in the desert. People adapted them for their own needs, and “the slabs” became a place name. The camp did not reopen as a planned civilian town. Its remnants became the setting for an informal settlement.

Architect Charlie Hailey and photographer Donovan Wylie explored this relationship in Slab City: Dispatches from the Last Free Place. Their work draws attention to a revealing feature: an off-grid settlement can still occupy the street grid and boundaries inherited from a military installation. Individual choices unfold within an older physical framework. [6]

Explore the camp’s changing eras

Select a stage to distinguish the base’s construction, wartime role, dismantling, and later settlement. Each date describes a different change.

Reading the landscape today

In their Smithsonian interview, Hailey and Wylie describe looking for the former perimeter, street pattern, and surviving infrastructure. A slab or sentry box can reveal an earlier purpose even when the surrounding landscape has changed. Those are useful questions to bring to the site: what was built here, what survived, and how was it reused? [7]

Salvation Mountain and East Jesus belong to later artistic chapters. The State Lands Commission’s 2014–15 report identifies Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain and the East Jesus art development within the former camp parcel’s wider story. They help connect the military past with the creative landscape people recognize today. [5]

Why the acreages and dates can look different

Sources describe several footprints: the developed camp, its larger reservation, and extensive training lands. The California military history account distinguishes a roughly 631-acre headquarters site from a 114,332-acre reservation. The Navy’s construction history describes about 200,000 acres acquired for the station. These figures should stay attached to their source and definition rather than being presented as interchangeable measurements. [2, 3]

The dates need the same care. Ending wartime training, removing buildings, and transferring property were different actions. The clearest account follows the sequence instead of forcing the entire transition into one year.

That is what makes Camp Dunlap worth remembering. Its buildings were temporary, but their foundations helped shape a place that outlasted the installation. In Slab City, a floor can be both a usable surface and a surviving piece of wartime history.