Evel Knievel's Snake River Canyon Jump
Near Twin Falls, Idaho
Off to the south rim of the Snake River Canyon stands a small monument to one of America's great failures, which is also one of its great spectacles. On September eighth, nineteen seventy-four, the daredevil Robert Evel Knievel tried to leap this mile-wide chasm aboard a steam-powered rocket he called the Skycycle. He launched from an earthen ramp still visible on the rim near here.
The drogue parachute tore open at the instant of takeoff, and instead of soaring across, Knievel drifted slowly down to the canyon floor, landing on the riverbank almost directly beneath his ramp. He walked away with only minor injuries. The carved monument, raised by his fans, honors the attempt itself.
Decades later, in twenty sixteen, the stuntman Eddie Braun finally cleared the canyon in a rocket built by the son of Knievel's original engineer.
