![]() "Bigwigs of the automobile concern" told him it was foolish to take "a wild ride on a sea of salt somewhere in the middle of the Utah desert" (Jenkins and Ashton 17, 34-36). In 1932, he set an unofficial record for driving twenty-four hours nonstop (112.94 mph), but even the local newspapers refused to carry the story for a week. Jenkins continued to use the salt flats for racing. When the salt flats portion of a cross country highway was completed in 1927, Jenkins drove a car and beat the celebrity train from Salt Lake City to Wendover, a distance of 125 miles (Jenkins and Ashton 29, 34-35). Rishel claimed that Ab Jenkins brought fame to the salt. He drove faster than drivers at Daytona Beach, but the automobile community did not recognize his achievement. Encouraged, Rishel convinced a barnstorming driver, Teddy Tezlaff, to test his "Blitzen Benz" there. ![]() In 1907, he and two Salt Lake City businessmen tested the area with a Pierce-Arrow. That crossing was slow, but Rishel recognized the potential for automobiles. He first crossed the salt on a bicycle in 1896 as part of a nationwide contest. Bill Rishel, later president of the Utah Automobile Association, introduced the concept of automobile racing on the salt flats. ![]() Emigrant trains like the Donner-Reed Party learned how difficult it was to travel across the thin salt. The Native Americans avoided the area because there was no water and nothing would grow there. The Bonneville Salt Flats did not start out as a racing venue. ![]()
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