So vast and open are the Bonneville Salt Flats that it could easily be the vacation place of choice for claustrophobics. So enormous is this famous natural wonder that astronaut John Glenn could easily pick out the glistening white geological plain from space. The salt beds are not just flat, they are wondrously flat, a benchmark of flatness where awe and dread can be simultaneously measured on the first visit.

It is this flatness that has produced an industrial-age disease termed “Salt Fever.” Similar to the “Need for Speed,” also experienced this century as society transitioned from agricultural-based to machine-dependent, people that have an insatiable desire for triple digit speed experiences find relief on the salt flat. Doctors have found no cure. The affliction settles deep into the hearts and minds of those for whom speed is an essential part of being alive.

Salt fever makes the psyche experience a unmerciful “speed itch.” Only temporary relief is possible -- obtained by traveling as fast as possible as many times as possible in a given racing season. More powerful than the lunar pull on earth’s oceanic tides, a side effect of salt fever can be observed when a Bonneville enthusiast (racers and spectators seem to be equally affected) ponders the wonders of the salt. Such thoughts have reduced rough and tough, gruff men with tool-calloused hands to unashamed tears.

So big are the flats that you can spin-out at 200 mph and not hit a darn thing. From the ground the curvature of the earth is readily apparent to anyone who dares venture onto the pancake wasteland. Possessed of an eerie lonesome nature, just standing on the surface is like being on another planet. No space suit required.

Just as space exploration has its risks, so to does the quest for speed. High speed. Not just a little tromp-your-foot-on-the-throttle for a few seconds and hope you don’t get arrested speed, but all-out, flat-out speed. Speed like most people will never experience. Speed of such ragged edge excitement proportion that only a determined few will know the rapture.

Located immediately north of Interstate 80 near the Nevada and Utah state lines near Wendover, the flats are comprised of approximately 44,000 acres. The salt crust ranges in thickness from 4 feet to less that 1/16 inch as it grades into the surrounding mud flats. Because the elevation is ?4,500 feet above sea level, racing vehicles have to be specially tuned for the rarified air. The long distances demand specific gearing to take full advantage of the course, yet not blow the power train to smithereens.

The salt flats matriculated from a place to be avoided at all costs by the wagon train pioneers (remember the Donner Party) to a place of sacred reverence, the ultimate speed laboratory embraced by land speed racers world wide.

Throughout the last century, the flats have attracted the greatest names in motor racing. In good weather years the International Speedway offered up a course 14 miles long. Bonneville boasts of having more land speed records broken on its surface than any other spot on earth -- a revered mecca of quintessential timed speed trials where drivers have flogged physics and argued with emotions to win velocity crowns.

The well-worn, but thoroughly succinct adage, “Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?” gets redefined at Bonneville because even if the money is available, how fast a person can potentially travel changes from the physical movement of pushing down the right foot and shifting gears, to testing the limits of individual courage.

Pioneers told of wild illusions and terrifying mirages while crossing the inhospitable flats. The Bonneville racers can empathize. Not a friendly lazy afternoon straight-line acceleration romp, anyone who has raced a car, motorcycle, or truck upon the Bonneville Salt Flats understands what daring greatly is all about. From such daring comes a speed pedigree recognized and respected internationally.

In 1997 Britain’s British Royal Air Force Pilot turned land speed racer Andy Green drove the jet powered ThrustSSC (Super Sonic Car) into history books at the speed of sound. Nudging past Mach 1 on land at a startling 763 miles per hour, one might think that snagging “bragging rights” to be “The World’s Fastest” would be enough for anyone. Not for “Dead Dog” Green, holding the World Land Speed Record left him unfulfilled because his deed had been done upon Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, nor the historic Bonneville Salt Flats.

“You can do great things with a race car anywhere in the world,” Green told me, “But what you do at Bonneville makes it that much more, it makes a record special because of the tradition. I don't want to be known as the only World Land Speed Record holder who hasn't driven at Bonneville,'' he quipped. Here was a case of the worst kind of raging salt fever . . . the afflicted having been infected without ever setting foot on the speedway.

Green’s first opportunity came in 1998, but ended with bitter disappointment after the metallic-green factory-prepared MG he was to drive failed to get sorted out during the 50th Anniversary running of Speed Week. Bonneville taught him as it teaches all who come -- hard lessons. Veterans know that it takes more than mere cubic bundles of money to earn a velocity crown, cash alone cannot guarantee favorable results.

Salt success comes with salt experience -- no substitutions allowed, pay your dues, or lose

Starting in 1896, this is tome is a historical biographical overview of the Bonneville Salt Flats. Not a book about a few big-name heros, but a speed chronicle of the determined and the damned told from the Bonneville Salt Flats point of view. What great things people may have done in other places and at other times has been “checked at the door.”

This is the tale of the salt and the speed that comes in its telling.