Cowboys & Indians / October 2010 / Utah's Mormon Meteor

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Utah's Mormon Meteor

One of the saltiest places on earth, the Bonneville Salt Flats in northwestern Utah is also one of the fastest. It was on this densely packed salt pan in the Great Salt Lake Desert that New Zealander Burt Munro raced his Indian motorcycle to a 1962 world speed record, a feat portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in The World’s Fastest Indian.

But Bonneville owes its earliest international reputation as a raceway to Ab Jenkins, the record-making driver who prevailed upon British racer Sir Malcolm Campbell to compete at the flats. Jenkins famously drove the Mormon Meteor models to numerous speed and endurance records at Bonneville between 1936 and 1950. The Meteor III — a Model J Duesenberg chassis married with a 750 hp V12 Curtis Conqueror aircraft engine — was capable of speeds over 200 mph. In some of his latter-day racing achievements, Jenkins drove a 1956 Pontiac to many stock speed records. He died that same year, and the following year, Pontiac produced a new model — the Bonneville — in his honor.

On the flats’ natural straightaway, other speed demons would go on to break the 300-, 400-, 500-, and 600-mile-per-hour land speed barriers, and Bonneville would make names like Breedlove (600.6 mph), Arfons (576.55 mph), and Gabolich (622.4 mph) famous. Rocket-powered cars like Gabolich’s Blue Flame eclipsed the exploits of prior piston-driven power plants, leaving the first speed attempt across the salt — by “Terrible” Teddy Tetzlaff in 1914 — in the distant haze.

Though the barren 30,000-acre expanse is now known for August’s Speed Week and October’s World Finals (this year, 6 – 9), it is also known for Old West crossings. Capt. John C. Fremont surveyed the flats in 1845 with scouts Kit Carson and Joe Walker. After retracing Fremont’s trail, a 23-yearold Lansford Hastings promoted a new “faster” and “easier” route to people moving west.

Despite Walker’s warnings against taking what became known as the Hastings Cutoff, the emigrant Donner Party followed the supposed shortcut in 1846 with tragic results: Their wagons became mired in mud beneath the salt flats. Arriving late in the Sierra Nevadas, the party was snowed in for the winter. Starving and sick, they resorted to cannibalism of the already dead. Of the 87 original members, only 48 made it to California. Pieces of their abandoned wagons were still on the flats in the 1930s. In 1986, when archaeologists examined the area for evidence of the ill-fated pioneers, Donner wheel ruts — so unlike the traces of racing tires that would come after — were still visible in the salt.

 

Issue: October 2010

Filed under: Travel, Outdoors, Riding