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
Utah Olympic Park Track the highest recorded luge speed of on October 16, 2001 that made the "Guinness Book of World Records". Benshoof's speed record was eclipsed by Germany's Felix Loch on February 21, 2009 at the 2008-09 Luge World Cup season finale at the Whistler Sliding Centre in British Columbia, Canada when Loch reached a top speed of . Utah Olympic Park Track The Utah Olympic Park Track is a bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton track located in the Utah Olympic Park, near Park City, Utah, United States. During the 2002 Winter Olympics, held nearby in Salt Lake City, the track hosted the bobsleigh,