Yes! I-80 cuts directly through the salt flats, and the speed limit is 80mph, but if that doesn’t fulfill your need for speed, pull off the highway at the west-bound rest area just beyond mile marker 11. Now, when it rains, salt is dissolved until the water either drains into the Great Salt Lake or evaporates, leaving a level surface of salt like an enormous natural zamboni. Today, the Great Salt Lake is all that remains of Lake Bonneville, but the salt it left behind covers forty square miles of the Utahn desert. As the last ice age ended and the climate shifted to warmer temperatures, the evaporation rate increased, and the ancient lake slowly dried.

13,000 years ago, an enormous lake known as Lake Bonneville covered much of what is western Utah. Normally, salt washes downstream into rivers and eventually into the ocean, but since water is trapped in the Great Basin salt is left behind in the desert when the water evaporates. This geographical area has no method of draining any precipitation that falls here. Nearly all of Nevada and parts of neighboring states including the western half of Utah is part of the Great Basin. Just off of I-80 in western Utah you can leave the pavement and set your own land speed record. Newer records were set in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.

In 1970, Gary Gabelich drove the Blue Flame 630mph here, which held the land speed record until 1983. The salt flats are perhaps most famous for the Bonneville Speedway, where many of the world land speed records were set. Roughly 100 miles west of Salt Lake City, Utah lies a vast expanse of salt covering forty square miles.

Bonneville salt flat records