Evel Knievel Attempted the Snake River Canyon Jump 50 Years Ago Today

Ryan Berenz September 8, 9:26 am

Evel Knievel X-2 Skycycle — David Ashdown/Getty Images

Apparently, jumping a motorcycle over buses was getting too easy. Legendary daredevil Evel Knievel needed a boost — literally — for one of his most notorious stunts.

On September 8, 1974, Knievel decided to take on Snake River Canyon near Twin Falls, Idaho. But this wasn’t just any jump — it was a 1,600-foot-wide canyon with the Snake River waiting far below.

Knievel, undeterred by basic physics, strapped himself into the X-2 Skycycle, a steam-powered rocket that looked like someone welded wings onto a missile with wheels. In fact, Idaho required that the X-2 Skycycle be registered as an aircraft, not a motorcyle.

The plan? Soar over the canyon like some kind of leather-clad eagle, landing gracefully on the other side. The reality? Well, not quite.

As the crowd of 30,000 cheered, the Skycycle launched off the incline with a cloud of steam. It immediately ran into trouble. The parachute deployed prematurely (perhaps it had second thoughts about this stunt), causing the X-2 to wobble around in mid air near its apex altitude.

The X-2 dangled from the fully deployed parachute and awkwardly floated down, landing on the same side of the canyon Knievel launched from and just a little farther down river. Knievel believed that if he had landed in the river instead of on the rocky bank, he likely would’ve drowned.

Though it didn’t go as planned, the event, which was heavily hyped and televised on closed-circuit pay-per-view by boxing promotor Top Rank, cemented Knievel’s status as a folk hero. It aired later on an episode of ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

And for Knievel, any stunt he could walk away from (and earn some cash while doing it) was considered a success.