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A part of the Great Salt Lake Desert, the Bonneville Salt Flats were formed by precipitated salt from Lake Bonneville, an ice-age lake which covered some 20,000 square miles of which the Great Salt Lake is the last remnant.
The text on this page is from the nomination form for the National Register of historic places, the race track was added to the register on December 18, 1975 (#75001826)
The raceway is just north of Interstate 1-80 and three miles ease of Wendover, Utah.
The racing area is approximately 13 miles and consists of hard salt sufficiently thick to support the heavy racing machines.
During most of the year the. racing area is either under water or too moist for racing. However, the dry Utah summer evaporates the moisture and by August and September the flats are ideal for racing. During this time a tent city of several thousand people springs up adjacent to the race area.
In 1939, Ab Jenkins enthusiastically described the quality of the Salt Flats in this manner:
“The salt beds are better than any of the existing board, brick , or cement tracks of the world because none of these is large enough. I made my first 24-hour run on the board track at Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1928, and know that on such a 1 1/2 mile circular course you can’t exceed 145 MPH because the centrifugal force would send the car over the bank unless the track were on a 90 degree grade. Another factor too, is that the pressure of the car may crash it through the timbers. Also, board tracks are seldom over 40 feet wide, which doesn’t give the driver much room to spin should he have trouble.
All of these handicaps are overcome on the salt, where there is plenty of room. The actual racing area on the flats measures about 10 by 15 miles. There would be an even larger area if it weren’.t for the dikes caused by the digging for potash on the beds during the War. [World War I]
Why are the slat beds better, then, than Daytona beach, Florida, where world racing marks were met until a few years ago? Daytona beach has a longer straightaway. It is 25 miles long. But Daytona Beach is only 100 to 200 feet wide. That doesn’t give much room to spin.
Yet, even though Daytona Beach were wider, it wouldn’t offer the safety of the salt. If your tire blows out, the rim of the wheel digs into the comparatively soft sand, and that means your car will likely go into a somersault…Never has a speed car overturned on the salt flats.
Then, too, the concrete-like salt has a cooling effect on tires which is found on no other track. However, because the salt is always a little moist, it does not furnish quite as much traction as does a dry dirt, board, or concrete track.”
There is presently concern that the nearby potash operations by the Kaiser Chemical Company are causing a deterioration of the salt flats as a raceway. Two conflicting conclusions were drawn from a study done in 1967. The Division of State Parks and Recreation is planning another geologic survey to investigate ways of preventing further deterioration.
William D. Rishel is credited with being the man who discovered the Salt Flats as an ideal speedway. In 1896, George Randolph Hearst had just started his New York Journal and felt it would be an exciting publicity stunt to send a message by bicycle from his San Francisco Examiner to his New York Journal. Rishel, then living in” Cheyenne, Wyoming, was hired by Hearst to blaze a bicycle trail from Cheyenne to Truckee, California. Accompanied by his friend C. A. Emise, Bill Rishel crossed the Salt Flats in twenty-two hours. However, their experience nearly rivaled that of the ill-fated Donner-Reed Party of 1846. In many places their bikes broke through the thin salt crust and they were forced to carry their mud-clogged bikes many miles. In addition, they ran out of drinking water and had to contend with sticky marshes and sweeping clouds of mosquitoes.
Rishel returned to the Salt Flats again in 1907. By this time he had envisioned the possibility of a highway across the flats and the opportunity for some racing. Rishel and two Salt Lake City businessmen, Frank Botterill and Wallace Bransford, started out for the Salt Flats in a four-cylinder Fierce-Arrow. As they neared the salt beds, they saw what they thought was a lake of water covering the flats. Discouraged, they returned to Salt Lake City. A short time later Rishel learned from some of the old timers that they had been fooled by a mirage.
Finally Rishel and his friend, Ferg Johnson, succeeded in driving Johnson’s Packard onto the Salt Flats via the railway ties. After driving on the smooth, flat salt beds, Rishel became fully convinced that they would make the world’s best speedway.
The following year, 1912, Rishel took A.L. Westgard, National Pathfinder for the National Trails Association, onto the salt flats and convinced the national automobile figure of the area’s potential for racing.
Westgard did not fulfill his role as a propagandist for the salt flats and it was up to local enthusiasts to seek other ways of publicizing the salt flats as a speedway.
In 1914, Ernie Morass, who had been barnstorming the country with a fleet of several racing cars, arrived in Utah. His fastest car, the Blitzen Benz s driven by Teddy Tezlaff, had set a worlds land speed record for the mile with a 140.87 MPH run at Daytona beach on April 23, 1913.
W.D. Rishel and other Salt Lake City businessmen arranged for an exhibition of the racing cars. They were able to secure the railroads help hauling the cars to the flats after one hundred railway tickets were sold. According to the stop watches of the timekeepers, lezlaff pushed the Dlitzen-Benz passed its earlier world record speed to 141.73 MPH. To the dismay of local promoters, both the American Automobile Association and the Automobile Club of America refused to acknowledge the new record.
In 1925, to commemorate the completion of 40 miles of highway constructed across the salt desert between Knolls and Handover, the Salt Lake City Rotary Club planned a special celebration. One of the events was a race between Ab Jenkins, a local racing enthusiast driving a Studebaker, and the special excursion train traveling from Salt Lake City to Wendover for the official ceremony, Jenkins won the race and in so doing became a stalwart convert to the possibilities of the Salt Flats for a speedway.
Ab Jenkins went on to set several records including the crosscountry record from New York to San Francisco, 76 hours in 1927; and the world’s stock car record of 82.5 MPH average on a board track at Atlantic City, .’Jew Jersey in 1928.
y in 1928. In 1932, Ab returned to Utah to prepare for an attempt at setting the world’s 24 hour record on the Salt Flats. Enlisting the help of the Utah State Road Commission to survey the course and some of his Utah friends, including W. D. Rishel of the Utah State Automobile Club and Gus P. Backman of the Chamber of Commerce, Jenkins set out to break the world’s record.
The course was marked off with four foot stakes placed every 100 feet and was lighted by 20 small oil flares. In describing the race Jenkins recorded:
…I remained at the wheel the full 24 hours without a relief driver. Though I stopped about 12 times to refill the gas tank, not once did I leave the seat of the car. The machine wasn’t equipped with plumbing either!
After I had driven a few hours, I was stone deaf. This, however, did not bother me so much as did other factors. The weather was ideal throughout the run, but the mirages on the salt drove me almost crazy. At night there was a bright moon. Shadows were cast over the sparkling salt. Sometimes they took the form of huge walls. I thought I was steering right into them. I could almost hear the sound of the crash.
On other occasions, the railway tracks on the beds some miles away would teasingly come off and on the course. Every once in a while the locomotive would seem to run across it, directly over my path. There was an airline beacon on a hill about ten miles from the course which seemed to change position every time I rounded the track.
Yes, the beds were like one big haunted house.
The Fierce-Arrow driven by Jenkins traveled 2,710 miles during the 24 hour period; however, the 112.92 MPH average was not officially recognized because it was not clocked by the American Automobile Association.
