It took more than four decades. It took more than $1-million out of the bank account of Eddie Braun. It took the son of the original rocket scientist to prove his dad was right. It took all those things and a ton more to conquer the infamous Snake River Canyon jump that Evel Knievel failed at in spectacular fashion back in the 1970s and Eddie Braun dominated like a boss over the weekend. The act itself was shockingly similar to the original. From the ramp to the vehicle that Braun was in and the distance across the deep canyon, those things really had not changed a whole lot. A steam rocket was to provide the power, the open field across the canyon was to be the landing point, and rather than Evel Knievel strapped into the “sky cycle” this time it was 54-year old Hollywood stunt man Eddie Braun. Braun is a guy who met Knievel as a kid and became fascinated and obsessed with him. Having appeared in dozens of movies over his career, he never gave up the idea of making good on Knievel’s largest and most robust failure.

The bill for the whole project was something like $1.6 million bucks. That money was almost wholly provided by Braun himself. The engineering of the vehicle was provided by Scott Traux who is the son of the original designer Bob Traux. While Braun wanted to do this to honor Knievel and close the books on the unfinished business that was Snake Canyon, Truax had different motivations. He was looking to validate the vehicle that his brilliant father designed and engineered. While Knievel had blamed Truax for the failure of the jump, saying that the defective sky cycle sent his parachute out early among other difficulties, Scott Truax maintained that it was operator error that scuttled the first attempt back in the 1970s.

Truax claims that he recreated his fathers plans right down to the nut and bolt and it was his dad’s design that carried Braun from 0-430mph in 3.9 seconds, to a height of 2,000+ feet, and a distance of roughly half a mile. This was a massive success for the team and it came in the polar opposite of conditions that Knievel had at his jump in the 1970s. Back then it was a kind of depraved version of Woodstock that broke out with biker gangs, lots of drunkenness, fighting, and general malfeasance. There were a couple hundred people watching this attempt, many kids, and as best we have heard, not a single drunken biker gang. Oh how times have changed.

We’ve got to give these guys all the credit in the world. This is an awesome feat and outside of the obvious, Braun becomes one of the few people in American history to travel to this height and distance in a home built rocket!

Watch a couple of angles featuring Eddie Braun and the Snake River Canyon Jump