Based 2,300 miles away in Greenfield Center, New York, the guys from Rolling Bones Hot Rod Shop feel strongly enough about Bonneville’s importance that they once again drove their creations cross-country to be there, despite Speed Week having been canceled. Photos by the author.
This past Thursday I travelled out to the Bonneville Salt Flats for what would have been the start of 2015 Speed Week, had Bill Lattin (SCTA president and race director) and Roy Creel (Bonneville Nationals Inc. chairman) not been forced to cancel it due to there being insufficient raceable salt.
Like many of you, Bonneville is a place I have yearned to visit for a very long time; I only wish I was doing so under better circumstances. Instead, I had undertaken the journey because Peter “Pedro” Hendrickson, a land speed racer and member of the Montana Dodge Boys racing team, had reached out and implored me to come.
I went because I couldn’t shake the feeling that what I would be witnessing would be the end, or very near it. My eyes might never have the chance to track a fast-moving object screaming off into the distance, piloted by a human being endeavoring to go faster than ever before, but at least I could stand on the salt with some of the people who had accomplished such remarkable feats.
Many land speed racers gathered at the Bonneville Salt Flats this past Saturday. From left to right: Doug Grieve, Tom Stewart, Bj Burkdoll, Jim Burkdoll, Dallas Volk, Larry Volk, Allison (Volk) Dean are all members of the 200 MPH club, while Tom Burkland (far right) holds the Class AA Blown Fuel Streamline record of 417.020 MPH.
Peter told me that he was assembling a group of people—many of them long-time, even multigenerational land speed racers and enthusiasts—for whom Bonneville is a deeply important place. His hope was that if he put the people who knew what was going on in front of people who could get the word out, there might be a slight chance that the Bonneville Salt Flats could still be saved.
We all met up at the Salt Flats Cafe for a good meal before heading out to Lands End for a full day of interviews and some filming by an Emmy-award winning documentary team. Normally, during Speed Week, every single seat in the cafe is filled—which is okay because land speed racers are a friendly lot—and a line with a half-hour wait extends out the door. The day before we gathered there this time, it was almost completely empty, just another one of many businesses suffering because 600 pre-registered racers and their teams and spectators didn’t roll into Wendover, Utah, this year.
For the past 15 years, attendants of Speed Week have fueled up at Marcelo Escobedo’s Salt Flats Cafe before heading out to make land speed history.
While the main event was to be the Saturday marathon of interviews, I would be in town for four days, and I intended to learn as much as I could in them. I know that a short, one-time visit in no way qualifies a person to claim much of anything, let alone that he fully understands a particular situation—especially when compared to the lifelong year-round residents of the area or the longtime racers—but I believe there can be a benefit to a fresh eye.
Russ Eyres has been coming to Bonneville Speedway for over 50 years, and in 2004 he began taking systematic measurements of the depth and quality of the salt. The news is not good.
Every person I spoke with—from check-in clerks, to museum docents, to Mayor Mike Crawford, to business owners, to the racers and enthusiasts themselves—each offered a different perspective, often at odds with one another’s viewpoints. Just when I thought I might have the whole picture, I’d find myself forced to revise my understanding. Not a bad thing for a journalist, or a citizen practicing critical thinking, to do.
Also as you might expect when it’s people’s livelihoods, passions and/or home town you’re talking about, emotions are running high, and even the best-intentioned occasionally lose their composure and say something they regret.
When I arrived on Thursday, the Salt Flats were dry, but a deluge late in the day on Friday would make it look like the prehistoric sea it once was.
In an upcoming article, I’ll try to communicate some of the complexity behind the problem of the diminishing salt at Bonneville—and make no mistake, it is diminishing. While the cancellation of last year’s Speed Week can be attributed to an unusual-for-August, especially severe rainstorm, this year’s event was called off due to the poor quality and thinness of the salt.
While the salt pan as a whole is made up of many strata, the thickness and quality of the topmost salt crust is what’s of greatest importance to land speed racing. Well into the area where racing happens, this gash was made with only a car key and shows the thickness to be less than a half an inch.
While the Bureau of Land Management awaits the conclusion of a scientific study in 2018 (which, a reliable source alleges is one year after Intrepid Potash Mining Company projects it will have extracted all of the potash from the Salt Flats), it should be noted that few natural wonders have been studied so regularly and so thoroughly as Bonneville has.
Since before the SCTA held its first Speed Week there in 1949, hundreds of teams of analysts (the racers and their crews) with their instruments (their land speed vehicles) have made thousands of observations and recorded copious amounts of data—every run another scan of the surface, another reading on the quality and quantity of the salt. And while one could argue that it’s only anecdotal, the fact that what once was called Seven-Mile Notch is now known as Five-Mile Notch, is compelling.
The Salt Flats are a rare and beautiful natural wonder, not very unlike the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, beloved by environmentalists, history buffs and automotive enthusiasts alike, and the fact that they are on the National Register of Historic Landmarks, makes their well-being a concern for all Americans. The question now is: What are we going to do about it?
Kaylin Stewart has been pushing for the past two years to become the youngest woman to be inducted into the 200 MPH Club at Bonneville. Next year will be her last chance, as after that she will age past the record.
Even if you don’t know what should be done to help the Bonneville Salt Flats… Heck, even if you’re uncertain as to whether or not they’re even in danger, at least share the fact that it is an important place to you by writing to the people here and to Kevin Oliver at the BLM. While you’re at it, visit Save the Salt.