page_title: Bonneville Salt Flats
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Bonneville Salt Flats / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Bonneville Salt Flats as seen off of interstate 80 westbound during the winter.
context_page_description: The Bonneville Salt Flats are a densely packed salt pan in Tooele County in northwestern Utah. The area is a remnant of the Pleistocene Lake Bonneville and is the largest of many salt flats located west of the Great Salt Lake. The property is public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is known for land speed records at the "Bonneville Speedway". Access to the flats is open to the public.
context_section_description: Geologist Grove Karl Gilbert named the area after Benjamin Bonneville, a U.S. Army officer who explored the Intermountain West in the 1830s. In 1907 Bill Rishel and two local businessmen tested the suitability of the salt for driving on by taking a Pierce-Arrow onto the surface of the flats.
  A railway line across the Bonneville Salt Flats was completed in 1910, marking the first permanent crossing. The first land speed record was set there in 1914 by Teddy Tetzlaff.
  Entertainment filmed at the salt flats include portions of Knight Rider, Warlock, Independence Day (1996) and its sequel, SLC Punk, Cremaster 2 from Cremaster Cycle, The Brown Bunny, The World's Fastest Indian, Gerry, The Tree of Life, Top Gear, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Furthermore, the Pontiac Bonneville (former flagship sedan of the Pontiac motor division), the Triumph Bonneville motorcycle, and the Bonneville International media company are all named for the salt flats.
  The Bonneville Salt Flats hosts the annual US Flight Archery Championships. The goal of flight archery is to shoot arrows from bows at the greatest distance possible without regard to hitting a target, and so the vast flat plane of the flats serves as an ideal location to measure the linear distance traveled by arrows without geographic interference. Both the 1977 (archer Don Brown) and 1982 (archer Alan Webster) world records were set at the Bonneville Salt Flats, while the current world record, achieved in 1987 (archer Don Brown), was set at the salt flats near Smith Creek, Nevada.
caption: Bonneville Salt Flats during the winter has about 1 inch of water on it[citation needed]
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