Kelly Knievel witnessed many of his father’s motorcycle jumps, but not the one that made him an icon.
Evel Knievel’s first-born child was at the family’s Butte, Montana, home on Dec. 31, 1967, when the showman left Caesars Palace with a fractured back, hip, wrists and ankles as well as a crushed pelvis and femur.
“I remember when he came home to Montana, and he was on crutches, and the snow was, like, this deep,” Kelly Knievel says, holding his hand a foot or so off the ground. “And he’s trying to crutch himself through the snow.”
Until then, he had no clue his father had collided with the pavement so spectacularly some 800 miles away in the desert.
“I was 7 years old,” Kelly Knievel says. “What’s he gonna do, call a 7-year-old and say, ‘Oh, I crashed. I’ll be home next week’? Come on, my dad wasn’t like that.”
You’ll be able to see for yourself what the man in the red, white and blue jumpsuit was like starting Saturday with the opening of The Evel Knievel Experience: An Interactive Museum of America’s Original Daredevil.
A home for ‘Big Red’
Mike Patterson was 4 years old when he saw Evel Knievel jump 10 Kenworth semitrucks, parked side by side, at the Kansas State Fairgrounds.
That 1970 Harley-Davidson XR750 Iron Head is displayed at the museum Patterson co-founded in 2017.
People from 80 countries visited the collection in its original home in Topeka, Kansas, he says. “And there’s not a lot of other reasons they were coming to Topeka for other than that.”
When the museum grew more popular than he ever intended, Patterson didn’t think about moving it anywhere but Las Vegas. It just took him awhile to find the right location before landing on the building at 1001 S. First St. in the Arts District, less than 5 miles from Caesars Palace. Turns out, there weren’t too many spots that could accommodate “Big Red.”
Patterson got into the Knievel business by leading the restoration of the 63-foot-long 1974 Mack truck and trailer that served as a mobile headquarters for all things Evel. At the time, it was rusted out and missing its roof and floor.
After what Patterson calls “about two years of solid, every day work” by a team that ultimately included 90 craftsmen, “Big Red” is now gleaming, down to the cab’s star-spangled interior.
When Patterson realized there was no Evel Knievel Museum in which to display it, he decided to start one.
What to expect
The museum, most of which was transported from Kansas, is designed as a timeline of Knievel’s career, starting on Jan. 23, 1966, with the debut of Evel Knievel and the Motorcycle Daredevils in Indio, California.
There’s a room dedicated to that Caesars Palace jump, including photos, video, informational panels and the helmet that probably saved Knievel’s life. The motorcycle, which he’d borrowed for the jump, has been lost to time, Patterson says during a tour.
There’s also a display chronicling Knievel’s lesser-known Las Vegas appearance, in which he jumped 13 delivery vans as part of five performances, Jan. 5-7, 1973, at the convention center.
Other highlights of the collection include the Skycycle X-2 from his Snake River Canyon jump in 1974, his 1972 Harley-Davidson XR750 “Shark Bike” and the suit, helmet and gas tank from his Wembley Stadium jump in 1975.
“Evel Knievel invented the licensing business,” Kelly Knievel says, standing in front of a wall of merchandise ranging from dolls and other toys to slot and pinball machines.
“Before Evel Knievel, there might have been a commercial with Joe Namath saying, ‘I use Johnson’s Baby Shampoo.’ But there was never any Joe Namath Shampoo. There was endorsements of products, but there was never people that actually had their own products.”
‘Evel Knievel and Las Vegas are synonymous’
Kelly Knievel moved to Las Vegas in 1982. He feels the museum belongs in the city with which his father, who died in 2007, shared a special connection.
The risk factor is the most obvious similarity, he says, but both his dad and Las Vegas made something out of themselves from nothing.
“Really, that’s the American entrepreneurial spirit,” he says. “Evel Knievel and Las Vegas are synonymous in that adventure in America.”
There was something inside his father, a drive or a yearning for greatness, whose roots Kelly Knievel can’t trace. He’s not sure how those would have come to a child growing up in Butte in the 1940s, but he’s convinced Knievel was destined for fame.
“My dad was not a motorcyclist. My dad was a showman,” Kelly Knievel says. “Making jumps is what made him famous. And entertaining people — and his intelligence and charisma and courage — is what made Evel Knievel. If it wasn’t motorcycles, it would’ve been something else.”
Contact Christopher Lawrence at [email protected] or 702-380-4567.
If you go
The Evel Knievel Experience: An Interactive Museum of America’s Original Daredevil opens Saturday at 1001 S. First St. It will open at 10 a.m. daily with last entry at 8 p.m. Admission is $35 for adults and $32 for locals, seniors and military. Tickets for children 6-12 are $16, with children 5 and younger admitted free. See ekexperience.com.
Saturday’s grand opening celebration from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. will feature motorcycle stunt shows at 11 a.m., noon and 1 p.m., as well as a custom and classic motorcycle show, live music and food trucks.