1996: The Year Vegas to Reno Let the Cars In

The start line sat in open desert about four miles south of Sloan, Nevada, in March 1996. Motorcycles had lined up for Casey Folks plenty of times before. This time cars, trucks and quads were lined up too.

Folks had raced motorcycles for more than two decades, and in 1984 he started Best in the Desert as a motorcycle series. For twelve years it stayed one. His World Championship Hare and Hound and his Las Vegas 400 were the top professional bike races of that era. What he wanted next was bigger: one race across his home state, open to anything that could survive it.

Not everyone liked the idea. Some people were not supportive of opening a bike series to four wheels. Folks went ahead anyway and called it Vegas to Reno.

The course ran north from below Sloan to Aspen Creek Ranch, about seven miles south of Dayton. About 60 car and truck teams entered by Best in the Desert's count, and they would become some of the series' biggest supporters.

It was the first time Best in the Desert motorcycles and four wheel racers chased the same overall clock, and the bikes won that round easily. By Best in the Desert's count, Ty Davis and Paul Krause posted the fastest time of the race in Open Pro Motorcycle, 8:44:57.

The four wheel answer came more than two hours later. Brothers Jeff and Jim Stiles brought their unlimited Class 1500 Raceco to the finish in 11:04:29, and Best in the Desert's records list them as the first car and truck winners in Vegas to Reno history.

That gap did not last. Within a few years the trick trucks and unlimited cars were posting overall times of their own. In 2005 Best in the Desert opened its races to UTVs as well.

Folks died in January 2017, at 72. Two years later his race was renamed in his honor, and it is still billed as the longest off-road race in the United States. All of it traces back to a spring morning near Sloan, when a motorcycle promoter decided the desert was big enough for everybody.