Wendover is a small community on the Utah–Nevada border, sitting at the edge of the Great Salt Lake Desert in one of the most desolate and strangely beautiful landscapes in North America. The town's twin across the state line, West Wendover in Nevada, is a casino strip that draws Utahns looking for gambling, but the real draw here is the salt flats.
The Bonneville Salt Flats, a vast expanse of blindingly white salt stretching to the horizon, are home to the sport of extreme high-speed racing — land speed records have been set here since the 1930s, and Speed Week each August still draws racers from around the world. Nearby Danger Cave, formed by the waves of ancient Lake Bonneville, contains archaeological evidence of human habitation going back 12,000 years to the end of the last Ice Age.
During World War II the military established an air base here for bomber training. The Historic Wendover Airfield is where the crew of the Enola Gay trained for their mission over Hiroshima — it is the best-preserved WWII Army Air Force base in the United States. A few miles east on I-80, the sculptor Karl Momen's Metaphor: The Tree of Utah rises 27 metres from the empty desert, a psychedelic ceramic tower that has baffled and delighted drivers for decades.