Great Salt Lake Desert The 1846 Donner Party's difficulties in making the crossing contributed to their becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Howard Stansbury explored the desert in 1849. In 1956, I-80 replaced the Wendover Cut-off across the desert, including a straight east-west section for ~ between the Cedar Mountains to the east and Wendover on the Utah/Nevada border. Following a railway completed across the desert's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1910, the flats were first used as a speedway in 1914. The world records for highest land speeds are regularly broken here. The Great Salt Lake Desert experiences a desert climate with hot summers
Land speed racing a record attempt in order to monopolize the salt flats for the day and block one of his competitors from making a record attempt. The current women's absolute record is held by Kitty O'Neil, in the jet-powered "SMI Motivator", set at the Alvord Desert in 1976. O'Neil reached . There is no "wheel-driven" category as such. The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile validates records in a variety of classes, of which the "wheel-driven" classes are in Category A (Special cars) and Category B (Production cars). The accepted record is fastest average speed recorded over any one-mile or one-kilometer distance, averaged over