Evel Knievel
Since May 2017, visitors from all 50 states and 69 countries have stopped at the award-winning Evel Knievel Museum on the corner of 21st Street and Topeka Boulevard to pay tribute.
Through interactive exhibits and displays, visitors learn not only about the records and bones Knievel broke, but also the motorcycles he jumped, the movies he made, the outfits he wore, and the massive amount of merchandise for both kids and adults that bore his name, from Wheaties and a bike seat to beer and a slot machine.
In 2017, the museum was named one of the top five new attractions in the country by USA Today. In 2019, it was one of 15 international recipients of a Themed Entertainment Award, along with industry juggernauts like Disney, Universal Studios and LEGO House in Billund, Denmark.
Bruce Zimmerman, museum director; MikePatterson, co-founder of the Evel Knievel Museum and owner of Historic Harley- Davidson; and Amanda Beach, marketing director, made a presentation about the museum for their competitive category of creating a museum on a limited budget. A day after the awards presentation, they encountered six Disney Imagineering employees who told them they would be coming to visit the Evel Knievel Museum.
“These people were opening a Star Wars attraction at Disney and they were planning on coming here,” said Zimmerman. “We were thrilled. And one of them did visit.”
YEARS IN THE MAKING
At first glance, Topeka may seem like an unlikely location for a museum honoring the legendary entertainer, who was born in Butte, Montana. But after entering the first exhibit, it soon becomes clear how a series of serendipitous events led to its creation as a complement to Historic Harley-Davidson in the heart of the country.
Joie Chitwood was living in Topeka in the 1930s and looking for a job at Meinholdt Machine Shop in North Topeka. The owner told him he didn’t have a position open but offered to show Chitwood how to work on race cars in the evenings, so that he could develop skills that would help him get a job somewhere else. Chitwood ultimately became a race car and stunt driver for Hollywood films. One of his most impressionable fans was 15-year-old Bobby Knievel, who saw him race in Butte and declared then and there that he wanted to follow Chitwood’s path.
CONNECTING THE DOTS
The next Topeka connection occurred when entertainer Jerry Lee Lewis needed to have a 1959 Harley restored. He reached out to Historic Harley-Davidson’s Yesterday’s Motorcycle Restoration Co. The motorcycle arrived in hundreds of pieces. After the crew’s painstaking steps to restore it, Lewis eventually sold the bike at an auction for $385,000.
Pleased with the craftsmanship (and the cash), Lewis recommended Yesterday’s to Lathan McKay, a Knievel memorabilia collector wanting to restore the daredevil’s Mack truck, dubbed Big Red. Patterson, who had seen Knievel jump his motorcycle at the Kansas State Fair when he was a kid, readily accepted the challenge. As the 18-wheeler took shape, so, too, did plans for the museum. In addition to founders McKay and Patterson, the late Jim Caplinger also played a pivotal role in the attraction’s establishment.
Although the team knew a lot about the nuts and bolts of putting machinery together, creating a museum from the ground up was new territory. They viewed YouTube videos and visited other museums for inspiration. Enlisting the expertise of staff by pinpointing their strengths, each employee took on different roles. A parts employee who had done remodeling work built the framing, and a sales employee who had worked at the former Hallmark production plant used his precision layout expertise on certain displays.
EXPERIENCE THE THRILL
The team turned to Dimensional Innovations in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, to create interactive attractions like “Bad to the Bones,” which depicts Knievel’s extensive injuries, and a physics exercise that lets visitors select from various jump components, including attire, motorcycle and obstacle, to craft their own daredevil scenarios.
In addition to articles about Knievel’s exploits from around the world, the museum shows television clips and two movies in a small auditorium. Video of his crash at Caesar’s Palace in 1967, shot by actress Linda Evans, demonstrates the dangers he readily subjected himself to in service to his stunts.
Visitors can view a display chronicling the 75 ramp-to-ramp jumps he undertook and the X2 Skycycle power rocket he used in a failed attempt to jump Snake River Canyon. They can also step inside Big Red’s wood-paneled sitting room decorated with Knievel’s personal things. For an additional fee, visitors can even take a virtual reality spin through downtown Topeka that culminates in a jump simulation.
Through interactive exhibits and displays at the award winning Evel Knievel Museum, visitors experience what it might have been like to be a legendary stuntman.
“We’re always rotating artifacts and introducing new things, and people often tell us they want to come back and look deeper and closer at what we have,” Zimmerman said, noting that museum guests have included all of Knievel’s children and many of his former colleagues.
ENJOYING THE VIEW
After touring the museum, people can spend even more time on the premises looking at restored bikes in Yesterday’s, shopping the showroom floor for new models or enjoying breakfast or lunch at Black Dog Barbecue.
Zimmerman has worked at Historic Harley-Davidson, founded by Patterson’s grandfather, Henry, for 31 years, a four-year stint in the navy his only absence. His 90-year-old dad bought the first motorcycle Henry Patterson sold.
“My dad thought Evel Knievel did a lot of crazy stuff and wasn’t really a fan, but he took me to Kansas City to see him when I was 9,” Zimmerman said. “My dad still comes here to drink coffee with the guys, and he’s pretty impressed with how this all turned out.”
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