The Northern Dry Lakes

By David Hapgood

The Alvord Desert, Oregon.

This is a story about obscure desert realms where humans have traveled faster across the surface of the planet than anywhere else. What these places lack in hot rodding heritage compared to Muroc, El Mirage, and Bonneville, they compensate with top-ranking in the Guinness Book of World Records -- it is hard to argue with 'fastest ever'. The current land speed records for both men and women were set on a pair of remote dry lakes in Oregon and Nevada. I happen to be familiar with both sites, so join me on what is possibly the most-desolate tour in all of motorsports.

On December 6, 1976, Kitty O'Neil set the land speed record for women on the Alvord Desert in southeastern Oregon, averaging 512.710 mph on consecutive timed runs (the car reportedly exceeded 618 mph on one pass, but ran out of hydrogen peroxide fuel before clearing the kilometer-length timing trap). Thirty-two years later, her record still stands.

The author's attempt at watercolor: Kitty O'Neil at Alvord, 1976.

What possibly lured O'Neil and car owner Bill Fredrick to the remote Alvord desert? Alkali, as in one enormous, smooth, flat dry lakebed. Rainfall in this part of the country occurs primarily during the winter months and never reaches the ocean. It collects on valley floors and sits in gigantic puddles -- temporary 'lakes' that are only several inches deep. When the water finally evaporates under the summer sun, it exposes mud flats, composed of highly alkaline soil on which vegetation cannot grow. These dry lakebeds are known locally as 'playas', and there are literally thousands of them scattered across the Western states. Each playa has a unique configuration and surface texture, ranging from uneven crusts which collapse underfoot (definitely not land speed record material), to those which are nearly as smooth as glass. Most playas are nameless, and many are so tiny that you can literally spit from one side to the other. The larger playas stretch out for great distances, but only a select few are large enough to accommodate Land Speed Record (LSR) vehicles.

The one and only Kitty O'Neil, circa 1977. Photographer unknown, from the author's collection.

Getting to the Alvord Desert playa where Kitty O'Neil blasted into the record books is relatively easy: yes, it takes many hours to reach this spot from pretty much anywhere else, but the roads are paved right up until the last forty miles. If you're coming in from the southwest and stop at the nearest sizeable town, Frenchglen, OR (population 12), you'd be forgiven for wondering if you'd ever left home. This tiny enclave is a bustling outdoorsy tourist hub, with an inn and cafe. City folks love Frenchglen to death, and use it as a base camp to set out on expeditions in their shiny new Range Rovers and Land Cruisers. If the sight of a half dozen of these luxury SUVs parked out in front of the Inn doesn't trigger a reflex to stomp on the gas and get the hell out of there, stop for coffee and a look at the high-end recreational clothing on display. It is a sobering reminder that the American West can be tamed, or at least offer up the illusion of having been tamed.

If at this moment you were to open a road map, you might be alarmed to note how close you are to your destination: the Alvord Basin, hallowed ground to any Land Speed Record purist. Not to worry, though, as most of the 'outdoors' crowd will be on their way up nearby Steens Mountain, and the few who trickle into the desert beyond will be essentially invisible. Why? Because the playa at Alvord is the sort of place that dwarfs humanity -- the perfect setting for a Land Speed Record attempt.

There are two approaches to the Alvord basin, but the southern approach is by far the most dramatic. After traveling down a well-maintained gravel road for about half an hour, you come over hilltop and, voila! There it is, in all its glory: the Alvord desert, a giant shock of white against the tans of the desert -- an unforgettable sight!

Twenty minutes later, you will have found one of the many dirt tracks from the gravel road out to the lakebed, and you'll be standing on sixty square miles of perfectly flat Alkali. This is the spot where Kitty O'Neil did her number back in 1976. In this bleak setting, it's easy enough to imagine her rocket car hammering the desert air.

A few notes about alkali: it is beautiful stuff. Imagine a cross between talcum powder and dust. Playas are made of compressed alkaline mud, lightest in color at the surface, the byproduct of salt left behind during the cycles of evaporation that have been taking place here for eons. These are not true salt flats, more like salt mud.

Alkali quickly gets all over your clothes, your tent, your sleeping bag, your food. It gets into the pores of your skin and you don't care. If you spend a few days here everything you brought with you will be covered in white dust and your hair will be matted (my girlfriend calls it 'desert hair'). But there is such purity to this setting that nothing else seems to matter. The moment you walk out onto an alkali playa, it is as if all of life's many distractions evaporate, instantly. I cannot think of a better environment to help sharpen a racer's concentration before a record breaking (and possibly lethal) pass in a rocket dragster. When I'm at the Alvord, I can almost put myself in Kitty O'Neil's shoes.

As an aside, I should mention that not everything about Alkali is quite so poetic. Most loathsome are the alkali flies, which are in abundance from spring until mid summer. These dreadful creatures live in the greasewood bushes at the margins of the playas, and your first encounter with them is one that you will never forget. Actually, you will remember every encounter with Alkali flies. If you're from the east coast, they will remind you of Deer flies, only worse: they are faster and sting, repeatedly. But while running to take shelter in your car, at least you won't have to concern yourself with rattlesnakes, as, according to the locals, "Snakes hate alkali."

Scorpions, however, love it.

Photo taken by the author at the margins of the playa at Alkali Lake, Oregon.

Now that we've seen where Kitty O'Neil drove into the record books in 1976 it's time to drive a hundred and fifty miles south, into Nevada, to see where the men worked their magic some twenty-one years later. I'm referring to the Black Rock Desert, where Richard Noble, Andy Green and a team of engineers smashed all the LSR records and went supersonic with the Thrust SSC in October 1997.

An hour after leaving Alvord you will arrive in the Nevada border town of Denio. This is a final chance to stock up on provisions, and you'll need them where you're going, because if getting to Alvord was relatively easy, getting to the Black Rock Desert from the north is going to be a true adventure.

In any case, now you're on pavement again, at least momentarily. The valleys here are wide open and the road ahead runs in an impossibly straight line for as far as the eye can see. You can step on the gas as hard as you'd like, but you're not going anywhere in a hurry.

The turnoff to the Black Rock Desert eventually pulls into view. Don't look for a road sign to point the way, because there isn't one. From here on out you will have to take full responsibility for yourself. This trip is only for those who are fully prepared for desert survival, or someone like me -- a mad man who knew the risks but was determined to push through in a rental car.

The gravel road is deceptively good, at least the first several miles. You will pass some ranches to the north. The Jackson mountains rise steeply off just off the roadside to the south, and fittingly enough the tallest peak (which stands at over 9,000 feet) is unnamed. You're already in the Black Rock Desert, but don't look for the playa yet because you're not even close.

To get there from here involves a journey through absolute desolation. Unless a Bureau of Land Management ranger comes along in his jeep (twice a month), you will not see another soul for the next twenty-four hours. If you're in a low clearance vehicle, you're going to need a shovel and a hatchet, the blunt side of which is excellent for leveling hardened mud. In sections, this road will be fully washed out, so count on at least several hours for road repair if you expect to get through. You should be prepared to turn around.

The author attacks dried mud in the northern Black Rock Desert.

Actually, this is the sort of desert journey, rare in the Northern United States, that makes you wonder about the consequences if things go completely wrong. Anyone who has spent time in the infinite spaces of the Sahara (yes, the one in Africa) will experience a sense of déjà vu out here. In other words, if your vehicle breaks down, you're really screwed: it's much too far to walk out in a single night, meaning that when the sun comes up, you'll still be walking with many, many miles to go. Not good.

It takes most of the day to get only partway into the Black Rock Desert, and you're still nowhere in the proximity of its fabled playa: by sunset, you will have made it as far as the ghost town of Sulphur: a good place to stop for the night and set up camp.

The following day, not long after setting out, the payoffs start to trickle in. The Black Rock Playa does not reveal itself in one grand gesture like the Alvord. No, it is too self-important, too immense for that. Instead, you get fleeting glimpses of white flats a mile or so to the east as you drive between low hills. Yet already something is telling you that this playa is incapable of disappointment, and this hunch will prove correct.

Back in 1983, Richard Noble chose this lake bed over all others in the world for his record attempt in the Thrust 2 LSR car, averaging 633.46 mph over the course of two runs, breaking Gary Gabelich's 1970 record of 622.28mph in the 'Blue Flame' at Bonneville. In 1997 Noble returned to the Black Rock with a new car, the Thrust SSC, powered by twin Rolls-Royce jet engines. He and his team had tested the vehicle on a salt flat in the Mideast kingdom of Jordan, but the Black Rock would be the world's ultimate course: smooth, resilient, and with a shut down area that was more than adequate. They were here to attempt the world's first official supersonic run. Bonneville legend Craig Breedlove had shown up, too, with his brand new car, the beautiful Spirit of America 'Sonic Arrow', with every intention of going supersonic first. It quickly turned into one of the most exciting rivalries in the history of land speed record competition.

Craig Breedlove's 'Sonic Arrow.' Watercolor by the author.

Richard Noble's 'Thrust SSC.' Watercolor by the author.

The Black Rock playa is shaped like an enormous 'Y,' and at nearly a hundred miles in length, it is truly massive: the Noble and Breedlove teams staked out their parallel racecourses on the far southwestern, or bottom of the 'Y,' aimed toward the middle.

When you finally get out onto the Black Rock playa and start walking (which is the best way to get a sense of the environment), you quickly realize that it messes with your spatial skills. After ten minutes, you might imagine that you've walked a good distance towards the middle of the playa, but the far side will look every bit as distant as when you started out. Yet if you turn around you will see that the 'lake shore' you left behind -- the border zone of scrappy, dusty greasewood bushes -- is well over a quarter mile back. You have walked out onto the playa but have not yet even scratched the surface. As at the Alvord, the rest of the world seems to fade away and you can almost put yourself inside a LSR car, getting ready for the next pass. But unlike the Alvord, this playa is on such a grand scale that when you look out across it you can actually see the curvature of the earth.

On October 15, 1997, Andy Green piloted Thrust SSC to a Land Speed Record of 763.035 mph. When car owner Richard Noble returned to Britain he wrote 'Thrust' (Partridge books 1998), a comprehensive description of the project from drawing board to realization, including 164 excellent photographs and over a dozen illustrations.

If you've made it this far into the Black Rock desert, you might notice a town perched at its southern edge. This would be Gerlach, population 500, which unlike Frenchglen, OR, is actually a hardscrabble place of true Westerners. During my last visit back in 2003 I stopped by the Miner's Club Tavern, a bar which features prominently in Richard Noble's book, and spoke with it's proprietor. I was happy to learn that she had kept in touch with members of the Thrust team in Britain: it turned out that I'd just missed a reunion, as chief engineer on Thrust II, John Ackroyd, had been in Gerlach a week earlier to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Richard Noble's 1983 Land Speed Record. It seemed fitting that ties to the playa continued to run all the way across the Atlantic.

As for the approach to the Black Rock Desert from the south, it is pathetically easy: an asphalt road runs from Gerlach 80 miles down to Interstate 80, and from there it is less than 200 miles to San Francisco. Every year, 50,000 counter culture folk converge on the Black Rock playa for a week of revelry known as 'The Burning Man Festival'. The really bad news is that, due to a combination of overuse and a decade of below-normal rainfall, the playa surface has deteriorated to the point where it is no longer suitable for LSR attempts. Richard Noble and team will be setting out with a brand new car in 2011, aiming for the 1,000 mph barrier, but they have stated that it is unlikely it will happen here. Bummer.

The Black Rock Playa.

The Black Rock Playa in full sunlight.

And so, our tour of the world's fastest lakebeds draws to a close. This is my first (and probably last) article about LSR cars and the beautiful environments in which the fastest of them have performed. I have to admit that the experience of writing it has changed the way I think about the vehicle of my dreams. I had always assumed that one day I'd build a funny car, in honor of my childhood memories. It wouldn't have to be anything special: a chassis kit and a twenty or thirty year old body, a BBC injected on alcohol, something relatively affordable to match my nonexistent budget. But the nostalgia FC craze has pretty much covered all those bases, and then some. If I were to build a car today, it would be a low-powered lakebed streamliner. More realistically, it would take ten or twenty years to complete, but eventually I'd tour the Alvord and the Black Rock. Who knows, maybe someday I will show up for Speed Week at Bonneville (fellow draglist contributor -- and good friend -- Peter Kumble, has staked a claim on the project regarding this possibility!). As for my own home track, it would most likely be a truly unknown lakebed somewhere in the distant reaches of Southeastern Oregon, a place never mentioned in any record books, far from the prying eyes of onlookers. It wouldn't have to be a terribly long piece of real estate, as I won't be going very fast. I've realized that if there is a cure for drag racing, its name must be 'Alkali'.

Alkali flat, Lake County, Oregon.

David Hapgood

hapgood_d@hotmail.com