The Real Evel Knievel Heroes? Not Knievel

  A recent story in The Idaho Statesman revisited stuntman Evel Knievel’s 1974 attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon. The story noted that Knievel’s “legend lives on,” but stopped short of calling him a hero. 

 I was part of a team assigned to cover the jump for The Statesman. I was a Statesman reporter at the time. 

  The jump was the biggest thing to happen in Idaho in years. Thousands of people from every part of the country were there for it, and that didn’t include the legion of print and broadcast journalists from newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television networks.

Celebrities reportedly included Steve McQueen, Linda Evans, Dustin Hoffman and Ali McGraw.

  The jump site is several miles east of Twin Falls. Every motel room in Twin Falls and nearby cities had been booked weeks in advance. The Statesman sent half a dozen reporters and photographers to cover the jump. My job was to cover the story from the south rim of the canyon, the site of a huge, earthen ramp from which Knievel’s steam-powered “Sky Cycle” (actually a rocket) would blast off for the opposite rim of the canyon.

  Jim Poore, the paper’s sports editor, would view the launch from the bottom of the canyon, which surprisingly turned out to be the best possible location. A reporter whose name I’ve forgotten would be waiting on the canyon’s north rim for Knievel to touch down. Photographers were assigned to all three locations. 

  Nothing could have prepared me for the spectacle on the south rim. According to one report, 30,000 people were there, occupying the fields around the jump site. Most had been there for days. It was an ongoing party –  alcohol, drugs, nudity, you name it. Barring egregious violations of the law, police officers pretty much turned the other way. There was little they could do among so many. 

  As the time for the jump neared, hundreds of Knievel’s fans converged around the earthen ramp, hoping for an up close and personal encounter with him. When at last he appeared, he obliged them by slugging a cameraman.

   The jump itself, as has been widely reported, was infamously known as “the big fizzle.” The Skycycle/rocket went pretty much straight up and straight down, landing in the bottom of the canyon a few feet from the river. Poore, who wasn’t happy about having been stationed there, ended up with the best seat in the house, and the best story.

  It was another story altogether from my vantage point on the rim of the canyon. A strip of land closest to the rim was cordoned off for Knievel’s crew, guests, celebrities and media people. Law enforcement officers were stationed every few feet between them and the rest of the crowd. I was roughly ten feet from the edge of the canyon.

  Those on the other side of the barrier formed by police officers weren’t happy about being denied the best view. Many had been partying for days and, drunk, stoned or both, decided it would be a good idea to push their way to the rim for a better view. It may or may not have occurred to them in their addled condition that this would involve pushing those of us closest to the rim over the edge.

  It’s an understatement to say that it was scary. The law officers did their best, but they were no match for the crush of bodies moving us ever closer to the canyon rim, and a 500-foot fall.

  Suddenly the momentum shifted. Badly needed assistance for the overmatched law officers came from an unexpected source: the Hells Angels.

  Lest anyone get the wrong idea, this is not an unequivocal endorsement of the Hells Angels. They are involved, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, in murder, drug trafficking and other criminal activities. Angels they decidedly are not.

   But on a September day in 1974, their actions earned the undying gratitude of scores of people, this one included. I was a scant few feet from the canyon’s edge when they began knocking heads and pushing back the crowd. If not for them, I might not have been here to write this now. 

  Knievel made a lot of money that day, a little under $3 million according to the New York Times.

  The Hells Angels didn’t make a lot of money, but they may have saved a lot of lives.

  As a stuntman, Knievel deserves to be called legendary. It took a lot of courage to do some of the things he did. Most of us wouldn’t dream of doing them. You wouldn’t have gotten me on that Skycycle for a date with Raquel Welch and all the money in the world. 

  But a hero? There wasn’t much that was heroic about the Big Fizzle. It was a disappointment to just about everyone who witnessed it. 

  There were heroes there that day, though. They may well have saved my life. And for that I am forever grateful to the unlikely heroes of the Snake River Canyon jump – an outlaw motorcycle gang.

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted the following Mondays on woodwardblog.com. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.