Salt flats utah racing2/22/2024 ![]() ![]() ![]() "Only the middle five miles, however, are what you'd call good track. "The track is about seven miles long," says Larry Volk, president of the USFRA. The one thing lacking was enough firm salt to have a complete track. And, probably the most ideal weather conditions - cool in the mornings and evenings, and comfortable in the afternoon. "The most we've ever had." The records ran from a low of 145 miles per hour to a high of 311 mph.This race, too, brought in the highest number of entries ever - 117. The following photographs and sounds document some of the work from the 1930s up to Speedweek, 1996.The 8th running of the World of Speed on the flats of Bonneville was the best race yet, and were it not for one thing, the salt, it would have been better yet.Ībout 40 land speed records were posted in four days of racing, which, says Mary West, an official with the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association, is an unusually large number. Today, hundreds of competitors arrive twice every year to attempt to break records. In 1931 Ab Jenkins of Salt lake City broke all former world speed records." In the years that followed, especially the 1950s and 1960s, the salt flats were a motorsports mecca. In 1912 this area was tested as a race track and has since proved to be the greatests automobile speedway in the world. The salt is white, crystalline aggregate, porous, hard and rigid so that it supports loaded trucks. Highways 40 and 50 and the Western Pacific Railroad. This deposit covers about 159 square miles extending some nine miles along U.S. The following is from a postcard about the famous Utahn Ab Jenkins and the salt flats "The Bonneville Salt Flats is a salt deposit left by the receding of ancient Lake Bonneville. ![]() However, the greatest of these is the long tradition of competing for land speed records on the Bonneville Salt Flats. The history of Utah motorsports is peppered with a variety of classes and styles of competition from grassroots drag racing up to nationally recognized stock racing. ![]()
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