Editor’s Note: Our author, Louise Ann Noeth (aka “Landspeed” Louise), is a long-time SAH member and a two-time SoCal Chapter Valentine Award winner. The following is a fresh version of her article summarizing racing at Bonneville in anticipation of its centennial, now from the perspective of actually having reached that centennial. The entire article will appear in this and the next two issues of this Journal.
They’ve been at it for 100 years—testing the limits of their imagination, skill and raw nerve. The road to a land speed record is a salty one. The 2014 season will see the Bonneville Salt Flats celebrate their century mark of record setting.
Attempting to set a land speed record will wear you out and thin your wallet like nothing else while simultaneously injecting you with a euphoric sense of youthful exuberance. How did such a forlorn, barren, inhospitable place come to be the Speed Mecca of hot rodders worldwide?
There is no championship crown, belt or purse. Yet here is where you will find the fastest women and men on earth. They are all amateurs, land speed racers who design, build and run their speed machines for love, for sport, for the sheer challenge of spanking the clock at wide open throttle for five miles.
Forget those rollers in the floor; this salt is God’s own dyno shop. Open only a few times a year, it took some 100,000 years to form the fabulous saline speedways located 4,214 feet above sea level immediately east of the Nevada-Utah border town of Wendover. The vast, ancient lake bed is a stark, glistening white plain that was once covered by a body of water 135 miles wide by nearly 325 miles long. Almost 3,000 square miles, it was formed during the last stages of the ice age.
To get an idea of its scope, think of Wendover as being situated on the western shore and Salt Lake City, 120 miles away, on the eastern shore. In between, the water was 1,000 feet deep. When the water evaporated, the minerals and salts remained behind settling on the lowest areas. It is these sediments that make Bonneville the world’s largest natural test track of immense proportions.
In the early days, hammering spikes into the salt was a sweat- producing job. By the 1950s two-handed, half-inch drill bits bored through the rock hard, concrete-like surface. Today, the fragile thin surface is much easier to breech. Still, racers know that hardness begets forgiveness when the rear end attempts to be the front end. The granite-like salt helps to keep the car upright and, hopefully, the brightness from the salt only makes the hapless driver dizzy.
Summer temperatures climb above 100 degrees during the day, yet the mercury can drop below 50 degrees—all within a 24-hour period. No matter how hot the air gets, the surface is always cool and moist to the touch—another boon for racing tires that build up friction heat at high speeds. The sun beats down ferociously, reflecting the rays back up. High grade SPF sun screen and plenty of fluids are essential. Without eye protection, be ready for “salt blindness” because bright takes on new meaning here.
Winter rains can bring up to 6,000 acres of standing water, which are an essential part of nature’s annual recovery process. High winds help manicure and smooth the surface as the water evaporates by early summer. Nothing grows out of the crystalline salt beds except one’s imagination and a few mirages—so flat that you can observe the actual curvature of the Earth with the naked eye.
The First Racer Arrives
In 1896, the year Utah became a state, newspaper publisher George Randolph Hearst concocted a publicity stunt to send a message from his offices at the New York Journal to The San Francisco Examiner via a transcontinental bicycle courier. Bicyclists William D. Rishel and Charles A. Emise set out to scout a route across the salt at 2:00 AM under the glow of a full moon rolling southeast along the iridescent salt. Pedaling their long-horned bicycles at speeds up to 20 mph, the joy ride turned torturous when they got mired down in mud at the edge of the salt and 22 hours later they were on the other side.
When the Western Pacific Railroad “conquered” the flats by laying rails directly across the salt beds in 1907, it also established a water replenishment station for the steam engines at a sheepherder’s stop and the tiny village of Wendover winked into life.
The First Motorcyclist
In 1910, a young carpenter named David Abbott “Ab” Jenkins (yes, that Ab Jenkins of Mormon Meteor fame and later mayor of Salt Lake City) was determined to see a prize fight in Reno, Nevada, so he hopped on his Yale motorcycle, headed west and became the first person to “drive” across the Bonneville Salt Flats.
“Like a bronco-busting cowboy,” declared Jenkins of his 30-mile jaunt over the wooden railroad ties to avoid knee-deep mud, “I approached the salt beds on the railway tracks on a bumping, jumping motorcycle.” Reaching 60 mph, the speed gave him a bigger thrill than any he would have while driving an automobile.
The First Race Car Race
In 1914, racing promoter Ernie Moross brought a fleet of eight racing machines to the salt. The jewel of the stable was the mighty 21.5-liter, 200-horsepower record-setting Blitzen Benz, under the command of “Terrible” Teddy Tetzlaff, a noted lead foot of the day. Ads in the Salt Lake City local papers announced, “A hair-raising, thrilling, soul-gripping speed contest!” Sales were halted at 150 tickets for the August 11 event. Among the ticket holders was Governor William Spry. A few motorcycles were also on hand, including an Indian.
It was an epochal chapter to auto racing. This was the Bonneville Salt Flats’ first timed speed trial. Tetzlaff ’s first attempt matched current record holder Bob Burman’s speed exactly, but took less time; his half-mile speed was higher—142.857 mph!
The speed went unrecorded in the record books because the local promoters politically hijacked the race publicity to gain attention for a planned transcontinental highway on its way from the east. The AAA Contest Board responded by revoking its sanction and the resulting scandal made the salt flats a toxic race venue for the next 20 years. But it was too late, the seeds of curiosity were sown about the godforsaken western wasteland that gobbled up wheel spin and spat out speed; in 1925, the Victory Highway opened, stretching 40 miles across the salt beds.
By 1931, despite lacking the AAA Contest Board sanction, Ab Jenkins was back driving a new 12-cylinder Pierce-Arrow car on a surveyed and scraped-smooth 10-mile circular track. Dressed in white cotton duck pants and shirt topped with a leather jacket, Jenkins donned a cotton skullcap and two pairs of goggles, and climbed in and took off. Temperatures soared above 100 degrees and he hallucinated under the light of a full moon.
Jenkins stopped for gas 12 times, never changed a tire, nor got up from behind the wheel the entire 24 hours. He logged 2,710 miles averaging 112.935 mph to set a new 24-hour average speed mark September 18-19, 1932. The constant roar of the engine temporarily deafened him. His feat was so unbelievable, the newspapers refused to publish the account for a full week. Worse, the AAA fined Jenkins $500 for making the run without their “permission.”
The British Invasion
Jenkins went back to the salt in 1933 with AAA sanctioning and snapped up 60 new records in one attempt on the 10-mile circle track. The feat riveted the attention of European racers John Rhodes Cobb, George Eyston and Sir Malcolm Campbell. Most Europeans refused to believe one man could have driven throughout because records set on the Montlhéry track, near Paris (officially: L’autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry), had required as many as five drivers.
When Jenkins convinced the celebrated race car designer of the day, Reid Railton,
to visit the salt flats the floodgates of speed began to open. Sir Malcolm Campbell was desperate to set a record in excess of 300 mph. He showed up on September 2, 1935 with “Bluebird V,” the monstrously big, Ab Jenkins and his Pierce-Arrow 9,500 pound wheel-spinning car powered by an eight-foot-long supercharged V12 Rolls-Royce R aero-engine. His arrival upended life for Wendover’s 400 residents. At the edge of the salt, hundreds had slept in cars overnight, or pitched tents. A steady stream kept arriving all morning: Native Americans, ranchers and other people poured onto the flats from three states.
On Tuesday, September 3, 1935, with more than a thousand spectators watching, Campbell set off down the 13-mile oily black line. Bluebird twice flew across those all-important 5,281 feet clock- ing a recorded average of 301.1292 mph despite a mile-long four wheel skid that set the tires and brakes afire!
“The Utah salt flats are the speed laboratory of the future!” Campbell cried to onlookers. Campbell’s World Record established, once and for all time, Bonneville’s worthiness as a safe speedway. By the end of the following race season, the salt claimed more endurance records than Daytona or its European counterparts had managed in a decade.
With a wide variety of purpose-built cars, most powered by aircraft engines, Englishmen John Cobb and Capt. George Eyston showed up repeatedly, joining Jenkins as friendly rivals collecting and trading endurance records until World War II brought everything to a grinding halt.
“Setting a record on the salt has a special flavor,” remembered Ab’s son Marv Jenkins. “The British understood better than any of us that a record set at Bonneville had a greater meaning than if you did the same thing anywhere else.”
Once the world regained its grip on peace, gentleman driver John Cobb came back for his last race on the salt, setting the world mark at 394 miles per hour with one run at 403 miles per hour. However, it was the publicized Novi runs that proved fortuitous for hot rodders because they brought young Southern California racing enthusiasts Kong Jackson and Chuck Abbott to watch the speed runs.
Jackson, a short and cocky type with an eye for cars and women (always in that order), enlisted the help of Ab Jenkins in securing access to the salt for hot rodders. Officials of the Southern Califor- nia Timing Association (SCTA), the land speed racing-sanctioning body, were desperate to find better racing sites and quickly sent representatives to Salt Lake City to gain approval from the Bonneville Speedway Association.
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Boys, Toys and Noise
“When the SCTA announced its first event on the salt, there was great excitement,” recalled Alex Xydias. “It’s why we converted the belly tank into the streamliner, we knew the salt had great potential, was so much larger than the dry lakes, we wanted to take full advantage of the opportunity.”
This was the dawn of the salty hot rodder. It arrived with more vibrancy, depth and scope than what had been achieved at the dry lakes in southern California. The racers were young, adventurous spirits, full of intestinal fortitude, exploding with enthusiasm and impatient creativity. They become Bonneville’s best friend.
The SCTA held the first annual Bonneville Speed Trials August 22-27, 1949. Although sedans and motorcycles would not be allowed, an SCTA press release boasted that 200 roadsters, lakesters, streamliners, coupes, sports and racing cars committed by paying the $7.50 per car entry fee. Only 60 showed up. Competition began daily at 6:00 AM throughout the week. The racers took aim down the five-mile straight-away with measured quarter mile and full mile timing traps towards Floating Island, the detached peak of the Silver Range, a mirage effect that seems to levitate above the surface.
The goal was speed, whether you got it, or someone else did, the point was to get there. After a car reached its peak, if some of its parts could assist another car to further push up its speed, then those parts usually changed cars. This behavior is one of the sport’s most distinguishing characteristics, constantly repeated among strangers as well as friends to this day.
SCTA Manager Wally Parks, driving the Burke-Francisco tank (i.e., Bill Burke and Don Francisco’s “Mercury wing-tank Stream- liner”) while busy with an engine fire, applied the newly relined brakes a bit too hard, spun-out and went twirling into the history books. Pivotal for the event, and the sport, was the new streamliner of Alex Xydias and Dean Batchelor. They ran fast, so fast that driver Dean Batchelor unzipped the treads right off the ribbed front racing tires, yet the car never wavered off course. The carcasses stayed intact, but sharing the tire information improved safety regulations; it meant others would be able to learn from the experience. Use of street tires was over.
Batchelor’s first run of 185.95 mph was backed up with a 187.89 mph return run. The collective racing jaw dropped; the speeds were 20 miles per hour faster than top dog Bill Burke’s belly tank had run on the SoCal lakebeds. Saturday’s record runs of 193.54 and 185.95 miles per hour for a Bonneville average of 189.745 miles per hour got the pits buzzing again. “We were stunned because on the lakes we had been crawling along, gaining a mile per hour, or two, with each run,” Xydias recalled, “Here at Bonneville we went over 30 miles faster than anyone ever had, it was a hell of a thing.” Competitors remarked that they had learned more in one week at Bonneville than in a whole year of competition on the lakebeds while inking 13 new records. It was speed nirvana.
A year prior to the SCTA event, on September 13, 1948, riding in his best “superman-in-flight” prone position, Roland “Rollie” Free set the World Motorcycle Record of 150 mph aboard a Vincent H.R.D. Black Shadow Lightning racing Rapide. He was wearing only bathing trunks, goggles, shower slippers and a Cromwell helmet.
Word of how good racing was on the salt beds spread through the ranks and 90 hot rodders from more than a dozen states pre-entered for 1950. This time, the voracious appetite for speed resulted in 1,307 runs over the seven-day event. Expanded competition classes included roadsters, modified roadsters, lakesters, streamliners, coupes, modified coupes and foreign cars.
The sparkling new streamliner of Bill Kenz and Roy Leslie, driven by 28-year-old Willie Young, screamed into hot-rod history cutting the first-ever 200 miles per hour run at 206.504 miles per hour.
All through the seven-day speed fest engines went in, and engines came out, parts went on and parts blew off, wheels were trued and tires got chewed, the smell of greasy oil perfumed the air.
The racing crowd was grateful for what little there was in nearby Wendover. When the sun went down the hot rodders pulled out flashlights, turned on headlights, or relocated to well-lit motel rooms to reassemble their engines.
Competitors established nine new Bonneville records and improved on seven old ones. The Kenz and Leslie streamliner was presented with the “Best Designed Car” award. Xydias and Batchelor lugged off the new, immense four-foot high HOT ROD Magazine National Championship Trophy for fastest one-way time of the meet at 210 miles per hour.
One thing was certain: the sport of land speed racing was on the upside of the power curve. As long as the sport was done for fun and recreation, not money and fame, it would thrive. Racers enjoyed designing and fabricating new, improved performance parts and cars.
In 1951 two black oil guide lines were laid the length of the track for the 151 racers that showed up—a suggestion from Ab Jenkins. Racers were joined by the nervous roar of 10 “invitation only” motorcycle entries.
Women could own the race entry but not drive. The boys were terrified that if a woman was hurt, it would spell disaster for the sport. Short-sighted as it was, it would be years before women would prove gender had nothing to do with going fast.
In nearly 2,000 runs, a total of 16 new class records were set by 200 entrants from 15 states that year. A few had begun using Nitromethane, aka “liquid dynamite,” a nose-wrinkling, eye-watering explosive chemical that boosted the potency of the fuel, but whose misuse destroyed engines.
Early supercharger development showed promise thanks to Tom Beatty. The first was part of his new girder-type tube frame wing tank chassis that sported a swing axle rear suspension. His 296 cid Mercury engine was topped with Navarro heads and Roots-type blower of his making. The combination clocked a staggering 188 miles per hour through the quarter-mile.
The much-loved and thoroughly exploited Ford flathead was in its sunset by 1952. Chrysler released its new overhead valve “Hemi” the year before, and would sell more than a million in De Soto, Dodge and Chrysler models. The race for horsepower expanded into 41 separate divisions for 1952 with many of the new overhead-valve powerplants immediately being adapted for salt racing.
The 1951 “invited” motorcycles had trampled so many Ameri- can Motorcycle Association (AMA) records, some decades old, that SCTA officials doubled the invitation list for 1952.
Establishment automotive engineers often informed the enthusiasts their modification ideas were impossible, yet every year more impossible things were done. A prime example was when Willie Davis and George Hill turned up with their streamliner “City of Burbank” to collect the “Maremont Trophy” (sponsored by the Maremont Corporation, an automotive parts manufacturer) given to the car that had not only had the best engineering ideas, but also proved itself in the traps.
Hill and Davis came back to the salt two weeks later and driver Hill set new international Class C records for the flying start kilometer and mile, taking the record away from Germany’s Auto Union. With that one act, the hot rodder achieved legitimacy heretofore unknown. It would be the first of many such acts.
Bonneville’s biggest threat for continued vitality was the newly formed National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). Although in its infancy, a decade later would be the single biggest reason salt racers steadily defected to the hard-surfaced quarter-mile tracks. Why run a few times a year when you could run several times a week?
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The single most important development in the early days of Bonneville amateur racing was when the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company responded to the salt racer’s cry for help with new, affordable, high-speed tires, reliable up to 300 miles per hour. Fire- stone’s critical contribution marked the first time that a mainstream company had designed and built a product specifically for use at the Bonneville Salt Flats. The new eight-ply tires were appropriately named “Bonneville” and featured a new method of tread adhesion.
200 MPH Club Formed
Hop Up magazine established the Bonneville 200 MPH Club in 1952 to recognize the remarkable speed achievements of hot rodders. The sole requirement for lifetime membership, and the only way to get in, was to drive a car two ways over a measured mile at a clocked speed of 200 miles an hour or better. During the 1953 fifth annual Bonneville Nationals, out of almost 300 entries clocked on 1,171 runs down a nine-mile course, only five qualified for membership in the new go-fast fraternity.
The high degree of safety at Bonneville was due to Roy “Multy” Aldrich’s stringent technical inspection process for SCTA. Aldrich could easily see flaws and dangerous conditions that eluded some of the most dedicated inspectors and knowledgeable racers. It is “safe” to say many a young life was protected because Aldrich volunteered for decades.
By 1953 the pits now swarmed with Detroit’s new overhead- valve engines. Of the 17 records set in 32 classes, 12 were with the overheads. But the vintage engines were not through.
The Vesco-Dinkins lakester (Johnny Vesco and Jimmy Dinkins’ creation) was a three-foot high, open-wheeled car that sported a mere 36-inch track, front and rear, and was powered by a Model B Ford engine that stormed to a 156 mile-per-hour average equipped with a Riley four-port head and custom-built fuel injection.
Knowing when they were beaten, AAA showed up on the salt right after the ’53 Speed Week to time five of the hottest hot rod streamliners in the country. When it was through, a total of 22 international and national records from three cars belonged to hot rodders. Wally Parks summed it up best when he later wrote in a HOT ROD magazine editorial, “Back yard boys have accomplished what it took industry to do in other countries—and improved versions of this country’s industry, American production automobile engines.” Dana Fuller, Jr.’s red and yellow “Big Mamoo” diesel streamliner powered by two superchargers thundered past the clocks at 170 miles per hour to set several world and national records.
By 1954, the sixth consecutive speed gathering gained national attention and respect as America’s newest automotive proving ground. The meet was interrupted by rain twice. It was the first time weather had been a problem for the racers.
Stormy Mangham, from Smithfield, Texas, ran his fully stream- lined Triumph “Texas Cigar” motorcycle. Unless other documentation can be found, he should be credited with being the first to use a braking parachute on a motorcycle.
Bruce Crower’s Hudson sedan that also doubled as his daily driver averaged a whopping 151 miles per hour with a supercharged Chrysler overhead-valve V8.
Jim Lindsley joined the 200 MPH Club when his “Harold Raymond Special” roadster inched over the 200 mile mark reaching 201 mph. It was the first roadster to do so, but it required a pair of Chrysler V8s.
Too much rain in 1955 made for crummy course conditions at the 7th annual meet and led to the death of John Donaldson driving the Reed Brothers lakester. When the car rolled, Donaldson, who was taller than the rollbar, was fatally injured. From that moment on, the SCTA Bonneville Board ruled it mandatory that all cars have adequate driver protection in the event of a rollover.
By the time the eighth annual Bonneville Nationals finished in 1956, the average speed for all 132 entries was 151 miles per hour across the nine-mile course. Heavily populated were the new competition classes for cars running straight pump gas.
By 1957 Dr. J.E. Teverbaugh mounted a parachute to the back of his Bonneville racer. It was the first known use of a parachute on a car at Bonneville and is today an essential stopping and safety device.
Teamwork paid off for the quartet of Waters, Sughue, Edwards and Smith from Bakersfield, California when their stock height ’32 roadster flew like a vengeful brick to clip the D class record with a 191 mph average running a 292-cid blown De Soto engine.
John Vesco and Jim Dinkins entered what had to be the world’s thinnest streamliner. The radical car did not meet the general formula set down by SCTA for safe wheelbase and tracking width, but its stupendous detail, sound theory and quality workmanship earned the car a waiver to run in an experimental class.
Dinkins pushed the 182 cid four-cylinder ’32 Ford engine with a Riley overhead conversion to 166 miles per hour.
John Vesco’s 17-year-old son, Don, had been coming up to the salt with his father since he was 12. A newly-licensed driver, Don rode his Triumph T 100 R, a bike he put together by drop light out on the family’s front lawn. He would go on to clock stunning records with bikes and cars.
The late ’50s saw the gas coupe sedan classes pregnant with entries. In 1958, during the 10th annual SpeedWeek, the Chrysler- powered Studebaker entered by SanChez and Cagle was the first sedan to crack the 200 miles per hour mark reportedly using a deadly 100 percent nitro fuel load for a one-way speed of 210 mph.
Marion Lee “Mickey” Thompson and Fritz Voigt showed up in 1958 with quadruple Pontiac V8s jam packed into the “Challenger.” Only 19 feet long and 59 inches wide, the car had two engines powering each axle. The car ran 362 miles per hour, but an engine failure scratched the car from the record books, but not the minds and hearts of hot rodders everywhere.
Heavy summer rains had made the salt mushy in places. The push trucks took the brunt of the wet salt, getting so plastered in the sticky, white spray that it looked as though they had been in a cottage cheese factory explosion.
Safety at Bonneville got a boost with the development of the Bell 500TX helmet. During SpeedWeek, Bell Auto Parts would lend, free-of-charge, a helmet to anyone who needed one.
A battle had raged all year between hot rodders and the United States Auto Club (USAC) after the SCTA/BNI (Southern California Timing Association and Bonneville Nationals Inc.) formally asked the world governing body, the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile), to offer direct certification to racers for world speed attempts.
USAC objected for no other reason than it would be deprived of collecting timing fees—very expensive for the average racer. USAC eventually prevailed showing the power of the almighty dollar in amateur racing.
Next issue: The jet-powered cars thrust their way making headlines across the globe as they go.
—Louise Ann Noeth
SAH Journal • September / October 2014
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