Bonneville Salt Flats

The Bonneville Salt Flats stretch 50 square kilometres east of Wendover across Tooele County, a white expanse so flat and featureless that the curvature of the earth is visible on clear days. The surface is a hard-packed crust of sodium chloride up to 1.5 metres thick at the centre, formed over millennia as ancient Lake Bonneville evaporated. Public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, it is free to enter and open year-round.

The racing season runs July through October, when the surface is at its driest and hardest. Speed Week in late August is the main event, drawing piston-powered cars, motorcycles, and streamliners attempting world records on the measured mile. Outside racing season the flats are open for walking, photography, and driving — you can take your own car out on the salt. The light is extraordinary at sunrise and sunset, when the white surface turns pink and orange against the mountains.

The interstate rest area at exit 4 has the closest paved access and viewing area. From there it is a short walk to the edge of the salt.

things to do sight nature
A story
The Bonneville Salt Flats are the dried bed of Lake Bonneville, a vast inland sea that covered much of Utah until about 14,500 years ago. Sir Malcolm Campbell set the world land-speed record here in 1935 at 301 mph, and the flats have been the venue for hundreds of speed records since. The salt crust is shrinking — it has lost about half its area since the 1960s, partly due to potash mining — and Speed Week organisers have periodically had to cancel because the surface isn't thick enough.