{"id":26911,"date":"2024-08-18T00:01:30","date_gmt":"2024-08-18T07:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=26911"},"modified":"2024-08-18T21:02:56","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T04:02:56","slug":"evel-knievels-snake-river-canyon-jump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2024\/08\/18\/evel-knievels-snake-river-canyon-jump\/","title":{"rendered":"Evel Knievel’s Snake River Canyon Jump"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Joe Berk<\/h6>\n

I grew up up in the Evel Knievel era.\u00a0 It was a glorious time, the 1960s, and if you were a motorcycle freak (as I was and still am), there was no way you could not have heard of Evel Knievel, a man who jumped cars and buses (and ultimately, the Snake River Canyon) on a motorcycle.\u00a0 He was one hell of a showman.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 1966 I was a skinny little 15-year-old kid, my Dad owned a new Triumph Bonneville, and I was in hog heaven for that reason.\u00a0 \u00a0Then and now, there was and is nothing cooler than a Triumph Bonneville.\u00a0 We were going to the motorcycle races.\u00a0\u00a0A big night out in those days was the East Windsor Speedway, a half-mile dirt track oval where they raced everything.\u00a0 Stock cars, two-strokes, and the big bikes.\u00a0 Not just locals, either.\u00a0 Harley\u2019s Bart Markel (National No. 1), Triumph\u2019s Gary Nixon (National No. 9), and more.\u00a0 It was the 4th of July weekend and it was 58 years ago.\u00a0 I remember it like it was last week.<\/p>\n

East Windsor Speedway is no more. It’s now tract homes. My loss; New Jersey’s property tax gain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

East Windsor Speedway put on quite a show.\u00a0 Dad and I rode there on the Bonneville.\u00a0 \u00a0I fancied myself a motorcycle guy and it just didn\u2019t get any better than the half-mile dirt oval at East Windsor.\u00a0 The fun started right in the parking lot with hundreds of fans\u2019 motorcycles.\u00a0 Fins and twins (everything was an air-cooled twin in those days), carbs, chrome, custom paint, custom seats, and more.\u00a0 It was all England and America and a little bit of Japan:\u00a0 Triumph, BSA, Honda, Harley, Suzuki, Yamaha\u2026you get the idea.\u00a0 Italy and Ducati were yet to be discovered, only weirdos rode BMWs (remember those strange sideways kick starters?), and weirdos definitely didn\u2019t go to the races.\u00a0 A new Bonneville was $1320 and a Honda Super Hawk (electric start, no less) was only about $600.\u00a0 It all seemed so attainable.<\/p>\n

The East Windsor Speedway is long gone now, shut down by noise complaints from the encroaching \u2018burbs and then plowed over for more cookie cutter homes.\u00a0 It\u2019s a pity, really.<\/p>\n

East Windsor always put on quite a show, but that 4th of July evening was a six sigma outlier on the right side of the bell curve.\u00a0 Stock car racing was first, then the 250cc class (love that smell!), then the big boys (including Nixon and Markel), then the main event (Evel Knievel!)\u2026and it was all washed down with a 4th of July fireworks display that was as good as I had ever seen.\u00a0 That warm New Jersey night out started before the sun went down and finished around midnight. I think the cost to get in was something like $2.50.<\/p>\n

Evel Knievel was the highlight for me and I think for everyone else, too.\u00a0 Evel was just starting to get famous, and here he was in person.\u00a0 White leathers and a cape trimmed in red and blue on the 4th of July.\u00a0 (Gresh and I always wanted capes, but\u00a0we had to wait 50 years<\/a>\u00a0and go to China to get ours.)\u00a0 A Harley V-twin, with monstrous ramps set up on the infield (one for liftoff and one for landing), with a couple of Greyhounds in between (buses, that is\u2026not the dogs).<\/p>\n

Airborne Evel back in the day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The crowd fell silent as Evel revved the 750 Harley and then accelerated.\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t up the ramp.\u00a0 Nope, Evel (ever the showman) accelerated alongside the ramps and the buses when we all expected him to jump. Faked us out, he did. Then he looped around to start again.\u00a0 Ah, I get it, we all thought.\u00a0 That was just to gage his acceleration before hitting the ramps for real.\u00a0 The anticipation built.\u00a0 Thousands held their breath as Evel accelerated again, but he faked us out with another run alongside the ramps.\u00a0 Okay, all part of the show.\u00a0 A third time\u2026.maybe this would be it\u2026but no, it was yet another tease.\u00a0 Back to the start point, more revving, and by now we were wise to the ways of Evel.\u00a0 We all thought it would be another feint.\u00a0 But nope, this was the real deal\u2026up the ramp rapidly and suddenly there he was:\u00a0 Airborne Evel, sailing up and over the buses, suspended high in the evening air, and then back down on the landing ramp.\u00a0 He hit the brakes hard, struggling to stop before running out of room, the Harley\u2019s rear end sashaying around like an exotic dancer in a room full of big tippers.\u00a0\u00a0The crowd went nuts.\u00a0 A seismic cheer drowned out the mighty Milwaukee sound machine.\u00a0 We had seen Evel, the man and the motorcycle, airborne and in person, flying over the buses that would have you leave the driving to them.\u00a0 It was awesome.<\/p>\n

It all happened 58 years ago.\u00a0 Evel, my Dad, and the East Windsor Speedway have gone on to their reward and I\u2019m officially a geezer drawing Social Security.\u00a0 But that evening will live in my memory forever, which sort of brings us to the present.\u00a0 Sue and I were on a content safari in Idaho (you’ve seen several blogs from that trip, and I still have a few to go).\u00a0 \u00a0When we visited Twin Falls, we were on the edge of the Snake River Canyon.\u00a0 That name stuck in my mind because it was where Evel went when the US Government said “no dice” when he asked for permission to jump the Grand Canyon.<\/p>\n

Good buddies Velma and Orlando on the south Rim of the Grand Canyon. Evel asked, and the Feds said no.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The entire concept was preposterous on so many levels I can’t list them.\u00a0 But that was Evel Knievel.\u00a0 Before he did it, the idea of jumping over a car was preposterous, as was the idea of jumping over several cars, as was the idea of jumping over a bus, as was the idea of jumping over several buses, and…well, you get the idea.\u00a0 Evel had bumped up against the limits of preposterousness, and that’s when he floated the Grand Canyon idea.\u00a0 The Feds nixed that, but Evel wasn’t a man stopped by obstacles.\u00a0 He went for the next best thing, and that was the Snake River Canyon.\u00a0 It’s over a mile wide, and it’s a big drop to the bottom.<\/p>\n

To get back to Idaho connection and this story, I looked on the map to see if it denoted where Evel did his thing and to my surprise, it did.\u00a0 And it wasn’t very far from Shoshone Falls.\u00a0 Sue and I did our thing at Shoshone Falls and as soon as we were back in the car, I plugged in “Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon Jump.”\u00a0 Waze didn’t know from Evel Knievel, but the regular iPhone mapping app did.\u00a0 We were only a few miles away, we were off to the races (so to speak).<\/p>\n

On the way in, as we approached the road’s end (it ended at the Snake River Canyon), we saw no signs initially marking the spot where Evel made history.\u00a0 We did see a lot of tract homes, and a sign selling more.<\/p>\n

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Not bad for an entire acre by California standards, but that’s Idaho. Someday every square inch of America will be covered by tract homes or high-density housing, and our politicians will wonder why there’s so little water and so much traffic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As we reached the end of the road, the Canyon came into view, as did the ramp you see in the photo at the top of this blog.\u00a0 Whoa!\u00a0 Can it be?<\/p>\n

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The Snake River Canyon, where Evel attempted his jump. It’s wider and deeper than it looks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was.\u00a0 On the other side of that dirt ramp, we saw our first indication that we were where we wanted to be.\u00a0 It was a good summary of Evel and the attempted jump that occurred decades ago.<\/p>\n

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Evel: The Man, the myth, and the motorcycle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The deal on the Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon jump is this:\u00a0 Evel didn’t attempt it on a regular or even a modified motorcycle.\u00a0 He instead used a steam rocket-propelled aircraft of sorts that was mounted on a launch ramp.\u00a0 The dirt ramp you see in the photo at the top of this blog was not one that you would attempt to roll up and hit at high speed with a motorcycle to become airborne. The idea instead was that the rocket ship would launch off a launch rail, carry Evel across the Snake River canyon, and then Evel would deploy a parachute and he (and the rocket ship) would float back to Earth on the other side.\u00a0 That was the theory.<\/p>\n

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An excerpt from the above sign. Evel Knievel, motorcycle astronaut.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It didn’t work out that way, though.\u00a0 Evel and his rocket ship made it about halfway across the Snake River, the parachute deployed inadvertently and prematurely, and man and machine descended into the canyon and onto the Snake River’s banks.\u00a0 Miraculously, Evel walked away, never to attempt a canyon (any canyon) jump again.<\/p>\n

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Another excerpt from the photo above. There was no V-Twin hidden in the bowels of Evel’s rocket ship.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We climbed to the top of the ramp and gazed across the Snake River Canyon.\u00a0 I wondered:\u00a0 Will we ever see another man like Evel Knievel?\u00a0 I think it’s less likely, given our predilection with biological males competing in women’s sports, our insistence on listing our pronouns (you can just refer to me as “hey, you”), and everything else our society has degenerated into.\u00a0 But that borders on being political, and as you know, we don’t do that.\u00a0 That said, though, I think it’s a safe bet that Evel never worried about anyone using his preferred pronouns.<\/p>\n

After our climb down, we wandered around the area a bit.\u00a0 Other than that sign above (which isn’t visible until you walked to the other side of the ramp) and a marker on the trail fence, you’d never know this was an historic spot.<\/p>\n

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Peering at the Evel Knievel sign on the canyon side of the historic launch site.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A tiny fencepost marker on the trail that runs along the Snake River Canyon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A macro shot of the Evel fencepost marker. History happened here.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We had a marvelous trip through Idaho, and like I said above, I still have another two or three blogs to wrap up our Idaho expedition.\u00a0 I’ll tell you before I get there, though, that visiting this obscure (and rapidly fading into further obscurity) spot was the highlight of the trip for me.<\/p>\n

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Never miss an ExNotes blog:<\/p>\n

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