Evel Knievel question

On September 8th 1974 American daredevil Evel Knievel strapped himself onto a rocket and tried to "jump" the Snake River canyon. As we all know his parachute popped open during liftoff and he ended up crashing down into the floor of the canyon.

I was an old Evel fan when I was a kid. I had all the toys and comic books and I loved to watch him jump. I've introduced my son to the world of Evel and he likes it too. Incidentally Evel's longest jump (184 feet) is now considered by modern cycle jumpers as a "starter point". Of course nowadays jumpers are smart enough to use lighter motorcycles with better suspension, they now land on dirt instead of concrete, and they wear padding.

What I'd like to ask, is what if Evel HAD made the Snake River canyon jump and somehow successfully landed the skycycle on the other side? Would competitors tried to beat it? Would he even be a bigger star?
 
I live about 30 miles from the jump site. You can still see the dirt part of his ramp. A lot of people figure he never really intended to make the jump. The mess it created with the public and clean up were more than the Town of Twin Falls and Jerome county were prepared for. His son is trying to get permission to try the same jump.

I don't think even if he had made the jump successfully, that others would have gained the permission to jump after the problems. His ramp was on private land, but the landing point is public land. It is also two different counties he had to deal with, one on each side of the river.
 
Hmmm.... thanks for the insider knowledge. I wonder if the site is itself a tourist site?

I do know he never was given permission to jump the grand canyon by the government.
 
An 1890s Evel Knievel

There is an eerily futuristic illustration from 1896 showing the American inventor E.J. Pennington jumping an English river valley on The Motor Cycle (the trade name he used for his invention).

Penningtons' Motor Cycle is shown flying over the heads of startled citizens in the river vally below in a weird foreshadowing of Evel Knievel, only in the 1890s. Of course Pennington never did such a thing, but somehow he was years ahead in his thinking of what a motorcycle should be able to do, and some day would do.

About the OP, I would agree that if Knievel had actually jumped the Snake River Canyon, an entirely new field of motorcycle competition might have originated. Of course, the "Skycycle" was rocket-powered, and not just a jumper, but you probably knew that.
 
Hmmm... Rocket cycling where a person activates a rocket booster shortly before a jump or maybe some sort of winged motorcycle jumping competitions... Yes that would be interesting.
 
Hmmm.... thanks for the insider knowledge. I wonder if the site is itself a tourist site?

I do know he never was given permission to jump the grand canyon by the government.

I believe that there is a memorial of some kind at the visitor center when you enter Twin Fall by the river. You can see the site from there and there is also a walking/bike path that I believe goes by it. It's not really a tourist site as ther is nothing there except the dirt ramp. I've never rode or walked far that way along the rim. I've gone the opposite direction because it's a longer trail. They have lengthened the trail on that side and I think it goes right by the site, not positive though.

here you go, the monument. This site does have some info that is outdated though.

Images

Google: evel knievel snake river There are videos and lots of different listings. I didn't find a current picture of the site though. There are a lot of houses built up in the area that weren't there then.
 
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