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Historians know it as the place where the California and Oregon trails diverge. Film noir buffs know it as the place where Spencer Tracy decked Ernest Borgnine in "Bad Day at Black Rock." More recently, Black Rock has become famous as home to the annual arty super-party known as Burning Man. It also claims a subtler fame: It's the place where men have traveled the fastest across the surface of the Earth.

For the past few years, Black Rock has been Craig Breedlove's home away from home. A dream brings Breedlove to Black Rock: to return the world land speed record from Britain to the United States and to be the first American to drive through the sound barrier. It's not a new project for Breedlove. In the 1960s he won celebrity as the fastest man on earth in his Spirit of America and Spirit of America: Sonic I jetmobiles. He was the first person to drive through the 400-, 500- and 600-mph marks. He set his last speed record -- 600.6 mph -- at Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, 34 years ago. Now, at age 62 and with a newly modified and rebuilt Spirit of America, he's fixing to head out to Black Rock and claim the title once again. The number to beat: 771 miles per hour.

Growing up in the 1950s in Mar Vista, in Southern California -- the nexus of America's car culture -- Breedlove got a bee in his bonnet that's been stinging him for nearly half a century: speed. At age 13, he began building his first car -- a little deuce coupe -- and he won his first drag race with it at 16. By 1958, at 21, he was clocking 236 mph in a supercharged Oldsmobile "streamliner" at Bonneville.

At the time, Englishman John Cobb held the world land speed record. In 1947, Cobb had piloted his internal combustion Railton Special to a two-way average of 394 mph. (Land speed rules dictate that for a record to be official, a car must make two runs within one hour, the average of the two being the record.)

Employing aerodynamics he'd learned making model airplanes and working at Douglas Aircraft, Breedlove set to work building a car that would challenge Cobb's record. In the autumn of 1962, his team wheeled Spirit of America onto the salt at Bonneville. It was gorgeous. At a time when American spacecraft looked more like they'd been built by high school science classes than by rocket scientists, Spirit of America looked like something out of "The Jetsons." It was powered not by conventional internal combustion, but by a surplus J-47 jet engine out of a U.S. Navy F-4 Phantom.

With 5,000 pounds of thrust, it wasn't just pretty, it was fast. On Oct. 5, 1963, clocking a two-way average of just over 407 mph, Breedlove brought the land speed record back to the United States for the first time in 32 years. He broke records with Spirit of America until October 1964, when, at more than 500 mph, his chute snapped off. The car overshot the track, smashed through some telephone poles, skipped across a saltwater pond and sank like a stone. Breedlove walked away wet, but unscathed, and with a record -- 526.28 mph. He's the only driver to nearly drown while setting a land speed record.

At a time when drag racing was the fastest-growing sport in the United States, Craig Breedlove was a hero. While his speed records won him the kudos of his racing brethren, his matinee-idol good looks assured him photo spreads in national magazines. People called him Captain America. The Beach Boys sang his praises on their "Little Deuce Coupe" album:

An airplane, an auto now famous worldwide,
Spirit of America, the name on the side.
The man who would drive her, Craig Breedlove by name,
A daring young man played a dangerous game ...

The hype machine went into overdrive as rival tire and oil companies vied to have their logos affixed to record-breaking cars. Breedlove was quickly challenged, and for the next two years traded records back and forth with rivals Tom Green and Art Arfons. But by the end of 1965, sponsors' interest waned as national attention turned to grander spectacles like the Apollo space program and to more down-to-earth matters such as the war in Vietnam. Breedlove's 1965 record of 600.6 mph held until October 1970, when Gary Gabelich drove the rocket-powered Blue Flame to 622.4 mph. But land speed racing's holy grail -- the sound barrier -- remained untouched.

Breedlove never gave up hope of grabbing the chalice. In the early '80s, he built a full-scale mock-up of a new, rocket-powered Spirit of America. But government regulations on rocket fuel chemicals effectively put the kibosh on the project.

Then, in 1983, a British sportsman named Richard Noble brought his jet-powered Thrust2 car out to Black Rock. On Oct. 4, Noble achieved a two-way average of 633.5 mph. Noble had upped the ante, but he'd left the sound barrier open while presenting the United States with a challenge -- one Breedlove hoped would rally sponsors around the flag, and to his cause.

"Frankly, though," he laughs, "I can't say the companies were all that receptive."

Next page | The most beautiful land speed racer ever built