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By Phillip I. Earl
Nevada Historical Society
The stretch of I-80 across the salt flats between Wendover and Salt Lake City is a bore and a bother only if motorists are uninformed about the history that transpired there.
Various overland immigrant parties traversed sections of this giant playa in the early 1840s; among them was the Donner party, destined for a tragic stay in the Sierra during the winter of 1846- 47. Abandoned wagons, animal bones and not a few human graves have been found over the years.
A band of train robbers, including my grandfather, rode east in January 1883, fleeing a posse after a failed heist at Montello.
Construction crews pushing the Western Pacific Railroad between Salt Lake City and Oakland, Calif., spent time there in 1906-07.
During World War II, bomber crews trained on the flats.
Much of the modern history of the area, however, is associated with William D. "Big Bill" Rishel.
A native of Pennsylvania who grew up in Cheyenne, Wyo., Rishel got into bicycling as a youth and was one of the organizers of the Cheyenne Bicycle Club in 1892. In 1894, he was involved with a bicycle relay race between Washington, D.C., and Denver, taking...