Years ago, some friends of mine took a road trip in their old Volvo station wagon out to the Salt Flats—en route to California—as a side trip. They had never actually driven on the salt bed before, but passed by a directional sign pointing to the unofficial race track. Once out there, they decided to do their own speed test and took the car past 100 mph for a minute, before realizing their car was starting to shake badly. That was enough rush for the day.
This month, on October 15, is the 60th anniversary of the land-speed record broken by Craig Breedlove in his rocket-engine-powered Spirit of America car, when his vehicle went 526.277 mph across the salt. That record only lasted two weeks and Breedlove and his crew went back out and broke the record again. But at the end of his run, his car lost its braking parachutes and literally skidded for five miles across the flats until he crashed into a row of telephone poles and ended up in a brine pond.
When his crew got to him, he laughed, climbed out of his cockpit and declared, "And now for my next act I'm going to set myself on fire!" Not to sit on his laurels, Breedlove set a new land-speed record of 600.601 mph a year later, which wasn't broken until 1970. He then went back to the drawing board and in 1996, he went out to Black Rock Desert in Nevada (where Burning Man is held) to try at another record, but crashed his new car going 675 mph.
Later, in 1997, a Brit by the name of Andy Green became the first (and only) driver to break the sound barrier by driving 763 mph in his car, ThrustSSC.
So many people come to the Bonneville Salt Flats each year to race a variety of vehicles. Sadly, the flats are thinning due to the West's third decade of drought. Racers love the salt crust—remnants of a prehistoric lake bed—because it keeps tires cool when racing at high speeds. The racing industry has changed water flow patterns there and the potash mining company working the land there through mineral extraction may be depleting the aquifer.
Research has shown that about one-third of that salt base has thinned in the past 60 years, shrinking to about half of its biggest size since measurements were taken in 1994. Racers blame the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for not doing enough to preserve the area and "Speed Week" has been canceled in past years due to the salt flats flooding, which left too small of a track on which to race.
Our Legislature has funded studies of our salty track, but currently, there isn't a plan to help preserve the lake bed that all parties agree on.