On December 31, 1967, Evel Knievel attempted to jump the fountains outside Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. He launched his motorcycle over the fountains and cleared them, but crashed hard on the landing, fracturing his pelvis and several other bones. The stunt made him a national name.
The casino-hotel is on the Las Vegas Strip. Knievel's jump targeted the hotel's decorative front fountains, not the Bellagio-style lake fountains built decades later. The distinction matters because later fountain spectacles have confused many retellings.
The jump mechanism and the physics that defeated it
Knievel rode a Triumph Bonneville T120, a British parallel-twin motorcycle with a 649 cc engine. That machine was a street bike with modified suspension, not a purpose-built motocross or long-jump bike. Its rear wheel spun on asphalt rather than gripping loose dirt, so traction and launch control were limited.
The core physics is a projectile problem. A motorcycle leaving a ramp at a fixed angle follows a parabola, and range depends on the square of takeoff speed. To clear a wider gap, a rider must gain speed exponentially rather than linearly. Knievel's run-up was short by modern standards, so his speed ceiling was set before he reached the lip.
The landing is where jumps are actually won. A heavy street motorcycle arriving at a shallow angle transfers enormous force into the rider's legs and pelvis. There was no long-travel suspension and no purpose-built landing ramp. The bike cleared the fountains, but the geometry of the arrival overwhelmed both machine and body.
Plain language: he had enough speed to get across, but not the landing setup to survive the arrival.
Quantified context: how far, how fast, how many bones
Eyewitness and contemporaneous accounts put the flown distance in the range of roughly 140 to 150 feet. Knievel's launch speed has been estimated at around 60 to 70 mph, though no timing equipment documented it. Those figures are reconstruction, not measurement.
The crash produced a long injury list. Contemporary reporting described a fractured pelvis, a fractured femur, a fractured hip, and fractures to both wrists and both ankles, along with a concussion. He was hospitalized for weeks. The bone count became part of the legend and varies in retellings.
| Detail | 1967 Caesars Palace jump | Typical modern exhibition jump |
|---|---|---|
| Motorcycle | Triumph Bonneville T120, 649 cc street bike | Purpose-built dirt bike, 450 cc class |
| Suspension travel | Minimal, street specification | 12 inches front and rear, typical |
| Ramp material | Asphalt run-up, temporary ramp | Dirt or steel with measured geometry |
| Landing surface | Flat asphalt | Engineered downslope landing ramp |
| Distance | Roughly 140 to 150 ft, reconstructed | 200 ft and beyond, measured |
| Safety gear | Helmet, leathers | Helmet, neck brace, boots, chest protector |
| Documented speed | Not instrumented | Radar and timing systems |
The table shows why the 1967 attempt was a bet against equipment as much as against distance.
Timeline: from stunt to legend to the 1989 return
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1967, Dec 31 | Caesars Palace fountain jump and crash |
| 1968 | Injury recovery and rising national profile |
| 1974 | Snake River Canyon rocket attempt in Idaho |
| 1975 | Further high-profile jumps and injuries |
| 1980s | Retirement from jumping and later health problems |
| 1989 | Return to Caesars Palace for a promotional appearance |
| 2007 | Death at age 69 |
The 1989 return is often folded into the 1967 story, but it was a ceremony, not another fountain jump. That conflation is one source of the persistent confusion about whether he jumped the fountains twice.
Edge cases and the confusion with other fountains
The most common error is mixing up Caesars Palace with other Las Vegas water features. The Bellagio's large choreographed fountain lake opened in 1998, three decades after Knievel's jump. Claims that he jumped "the Bellagio fountains" are chronologically impossible.
A second edge case is the word "jump." Knievel's bike cleared the fountain basin, so the jump succeeded in distance terms. The failure was the landing, which is why some accounts call it a failed jump and others call it a successful clearance. Both descriptions can be accurate depending on which part of the stunt is being measured.
A third edge is the injury count. Hospital records were not public in the modern sense, and later retellings inflated or rounded the fracture tally. The reliable core is a broken pelvis and multiple additional fractures.
Misconceptions worth correcting
Misconception one: he jumped the fountains and landed cleanly. He cleared the fountains and crashed on arrival.
Misconception two: the hotel was the Bellagio. Caesars Palace is the correct venue, and the Bellagio fountains did not exist in 1967.
Misconception three: the stunt was a failure that ended his career. The crash generated enormous publicity and accelerated his rise.
Misconception four: he used a custom jump bike. The Triumph was a modified street motorcycle, which is a large part of why the landing went wrong.
Misconception five: the distance is precisely known. No instrumented measurement was taken, so ranges like 140 to 150 feet are best estimates.
A counterintuitive professional detail: motorcycle jumpers often describe the takeoff as the easy part and the landing as the skill. Knievel's 1967 attempt is a textbook case where the crowd watched the wrong half of the jump.
Practical actions for verifying the claim
If you are fact-checking this stunt for writing, teaching, or trivia, use a short method.
Confirm the venue as Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip, and note that the hotel opened in 1966. Confirm the date as December 31, 1967, and the motorcycle as a Triumph Bonneville. Separate the clearance from the landing when describing success or failure. Treat distance and speed figures as reconstructed ranges unless a primary instrumented record is found. Reject any version that names the Bellagio, since that fountain postdates the jump by about 31 years. Check the injury list against contemporaneous newspaper reporting rather than later biographies.
Red-flag warnings when reading retellings:
A precise speed with no stated source is usually invented. An exact fracture count presented as medical record is usually embellished. A claim that he jumped "the fountains" without naming the hotel is ambiguous. A claim that he landed successfully contradicts the documented crash.
Limitations on what the record supports
The 1967 event predates widespread video and instrumentation. What survives is newspaper coverage, photographs, film footage, and Knievel's own later accounts. Those sources agree on the hotel, the date, the general distance band, and the crash, but they vary on the exact injury tally and the measured speed.
There is no authoritative scientific body that certifies exhibition jump distances. Motorcycle jumping is not a regulated measurement sport in the way track athletics is. Any distance figure for this stunt should carry the caveat that it is approximate.
The mechanism-level lesson is stable, though. A short run-up limits takeoff speed, a parabolic trajectory rewards speed nonlinearly, and an unprepared landing surface converts remaining speed into injury. That sequence explains the Caesars Palace jump regardless of which distance estimate you accept.
For a general audience, the essential facts are durable. The answer to the question is Caesars Palace, the date is December 31, 1967, and the outcome was a successful clearance followed by a severe crash. The surrounding legend is louder than the record, and separating the two is the work.