More on Burly
By noderel:
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Now you know about Burly Burlile. But you may not know that his reputation as a Volkswagen fruit loop is very well founded, and for your own sanity perhaps you should not stand too close to him at a rod run or at the Salt Flats.
After all, he is the one who truly ramped up the lagging interest in Bonneville, with a rod run to the salt that he created way back in the late 70s. He called it a Cruise. Back then, it was mostly a banner on the spectator line between the pits and the start line, just some rodders deciding to find their roots in a salt pan. We, me and Ron Ceridono, came along a couple of years later with Hot Rod Mechanix magazine, and we started heralding Burlile’s efforts, and quite frankly, all the renewed interest in the salt came through street rodders finding out just how much fun the long black line can be. So, blame Burly Burlile for it all.
Few years back, I got an e-mail from Burly saying that he and a friend had decided to go back and find a thing that they had earlier discovered when following up on a story I had done in R&C. I think the name was The Lost Texas Tin Mine. Or some such as that.
In a continuation of all those Vintage Tin articles I put together for R&C, I started compiling photos I had gathered during my annual trips from Southern California to Montana. The trip had become so ho-hum that I started looking on the road maps for alternate routes south to north, and reverse. After all, the desert gets to be pretty much the same old same old all the way from the Mojave to the Snake River run through southern Idaho.
The mountains are pretty much south/north, and usually there is a paved road up the intersecting valley. And not much else. That is, until you did out an old atlas of the very early l900’s, then you note a lot of names that might have been little more than a camp site. But, much of the mineral boom of Nevada came in those same early l900s. Meaning cars and trucks were around. So, what you do is you drive up one of those lonely roads from nowhere to nowhere, and you will see a lot of dirt roads angling off sideways right and left into a mountain canyon. Where there is a canyon, chances are good there is a running water course, and settlements or mines. That is where I have found so many old cars.
Rust free, unless they happen to be laying in an alkali bed.
But for you, consider following up on Burly’s recreation of his earlier discovery trip. It is roughly down what is called the lonliest road in America, Route 50 east to west. There are a number of old near ghost towns along there, and I had included a lot of pix from this tin mine in one of my stories. Burly found them on his first journey, and he re-found them years later. I’ll bet the 36 three window has long gone, but maybe not.
Burly says a roadster up on a hillside is still there, and I doubt seriously if anybody has found that old mine off a side road where the 20’s era sedans were. Good thing is, you don’t really need a 4WD to get to most of the stuff. You do need a pickup and some long pry bars. On occasion, you may even find a person or two still living in the long abandoned properties. For that reason, part of your survival equipment should be several 6-paks of suds. Not for you, of course.
Too, be aware that inside the shade of an abandoned old car body is shade, and snakes of the rattling kind like shade.
So, now you know howcome the renewed interest in Bonneville, and you know where some really decent vintage tin is located. But only some.