A project to restore the hardpacked salt has been initated by the chemical company that mines the flats, and the Bureau of Land Management, which owns the land. The hard-packed solid salt area which is used for the races has shrunk from 15 miles in length in 1950, to 10 miles today, and the quality of the surface has decreased. Covering 30,000 acres, the flats are about 12 miles long and 5 miles wide. The raceway, which spends much of the year under water, is slowly disappearing, and many racers are heading to the Black Rock Desert and other dry lakes. Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats are home to three annual speed events where racers can go all in on or in whatever speed device meets their fancy. The Bonneville Salt Flats, are one of the most impressive natural wonders in Utah.

Land speed records are classified a number of ways, and the current official land speed record, with a speed sustained for over a mile in distance, is over 700 miles per hour, obtaned by the jet-powered car Thrust 2 at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The Blue Flame, a rocket-powered four-wheeled vehicle, set the land speed record of 631.4 miles per hour in 1970, a record that stood for more than a decade, and the last of the major high speed records set at Bonneville. Numerous land speed records have been achieved at Bonneville, on the vast and flat natural pavement of salt: the 300, 400, 500, and 600 mile per hour land speed barrier were all broken here over the years. A 12-by-5 mile stretch occupying 300,000 acres of Utah’s pristine west desert, the Bonneville Salt Flats is like no other place on earth.

Bonneville salt flats utah