You never know what you’ll find in the desert. Monuments, rattlesnakes, thousands of hippies having a celebration, it’s an unusual place sparsely populated by fascinating people – and places. More than 40 years ago, car journalists found themselves out east of Barstow and stumbled upon heaven in the form of a driveway long enough to do 200 mph on. How’d it get there? Well, it’s all thanks to a woman called Mrs. Orcutt.
The story of Bonnie Orcutt involves some unfortunate circumstances. Born in Boone County, Indiana on Sept. 7, 1909, she married military veteran Kenneth Orcutt in 1948, but unfortunately wasn’t married for long. According to his obituary, Kenneth died in a plane crash over Lee, Iowa in 1953, and it seems that Bonnie set out for the desert not long after. She ended up settling on a plot of land in Newberry Springs, Calif., and all seemed relatively quiet until the Interstate highway system came along.
See, Mrs. Orcutt’s original property access was via Route 66, and Interstate 40 was set to run right across what would’ve effectively been her driveway, blocking her way to the outside world. This wouldn’t do, and as the Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association reports, Bonnie was about to see that the government made things right.
The government offered to buy her out, but she refused. She was highly educated, and began a letter writing campaign to Lady Bird Johnson, President Lyndon Johnson, Gov. Edmund Brown, and others. In 1965 the CA Division of Highways allocated $100K and built Mrs. Orcutt a 4 mile driveway to the nearest road – Fort Cady Road.
Technically, a 4.1 mile driveway from her house to approximately the nearest off-ramp, her driveway has to be one of the longest in North America, or at least one with the longest arrow-straight section. An asphalt monument to sticking up for one’s self in the face of roadblocks, it remained fairly secluded until Car And Driver found it during the double-nickel era.
See, given the modest outputs of most Malaise-era cars, finding a space large enough to do top-speed testing on the fastest cars of the time would be tough. Most publicly rentable test tracks were simply too small, and you’d have to be crazy to bury the pedal in the carpet for miles on a public interstate. That’s where the wildly illegal plan of using what might be California’s longest driveway to conduct clandestine top speed tests was hatched, and tuning legend Gale Banks was whipping up just the machine to put the driveway through its paces—a turbocharged Pontiac Trans Am aiming for the 200 mph mark. While Car and Driver reported that the first few incredibly illegal attempts were met with mechanical failures and understandably unsympathetic police, things seemed to improve for the last two shots. As the magazine wrote:
A few weeks later, we returned and encountered a friendlier highway patrolman. After we gave him a high-speed ride in the Trans Am, he stood sentry to warn us of any approaching, less friendly officers. In that session, the engine seized a piston at 196 mph, tearing the block apart. As the oil spewed onto the red-hot turbos, observers reported a 50-foot-long fireball trailing the car. Smoke was pouring into the car, and it seemed like forever before we could bring it to a halt and then furiously pound away at the window to loosen the tape and break free.
Several months later, we were ready to run again. With a strong engine and no police on hand, we hit 204 mph into a stiff headwind. As we were slowing down, a resident of a house near the driveway emerged with a shotgun to chase us off. Our goal accomplished, we happily departed.
Just like that, Mrs. Orcutt’s driveway was catapulted into the automotive history books in June of 1984 through actions you definitely couldn’t get away with today. While it’s hard to imagine her reaction, Car and Driver reports that save for that shotgun-wielding neighbor and the rare highway patrol, nobody complained about continued top speed testing.
Sadly, Bonnie Orcutt’s obituary states that she passed away on Dec. 7, 1986. In the years after, her homestead and driveway slowly fell into disrepair, and while the magazine allegedly used the driveway into the ’90s, it eventually became too pockmarked, too potholed, too decayed to continue.
Today, the famous driveway is still hanging on, marked as a public road on Google Maps called Memorial Drive. The house is there too, although recent photos paint a picture of serious disrepair. Still, if you find yourself on Interstate 40 between Barstow and Ludlow, hop off at exit 23, take the first right north of the interstate, and visit America’s 200 mph driveway. You’ll be glad to have it in your memory bank.
Top graphic image: Google Maps screenshot
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The drugs began to take hold before I even made it close to Barstow.