in
Biography & Personal Stories
—
Before the Jumpsuit: The Earthmover Wheelie That Plunged a City into Darkness
Long before he was a world-famous daredevil, a young Evel Knievel was fired from his copper mining job after an audacious stunt went wrong. He attempted a wheelie in an earthmover, severed a major power line, and accidentally blacked out the entire city of Butte, Montana.
The world remembers Evel Knievel as a cultural icon in a star-spangled jumpsuit, a man who defied death aboard a roaring Harley-Davidson. His name is synonymous with broken bones and spectacular, physics-defying leaps over canyons, fountains, and rows of buses. But before the fame, the television specials, and the sold-out arenas, Robert Craig Knievel was a rebellious youth in the rough-and-tumble mining town of Butte, Montana, where his first public spectacle involved not a motorcycle, but a multi-ton earthmover.
The Richest Hill on Earth
Butte, in the mid-20th century, was the heart of American copper mining, a town built on hard labor and grit. It was here, working for the formidable Anaconda Mining Company, that a young Knievel held one of his many early jobs. The work was dangerous and demanding, a fitting environment for a restless soul who seemed perpetually drawn to trouble. Raised by his grandparents, Knievel was a known local hell-raiser, famous for his small-time cons and run-ins with the law that were already building his local legend.
A Daredevil in the Making
Knievel's defining characteristic was a brazen disregard for rules and a thirst for the spectacular. He was not content to simply do a job; he had to make it an event. This impulse, which would later make him a millionaire, first manifested in a moment of reckless showmanship deep in the copper pits. While operating a massive earthmover, Knievel was struck by an idea that was equal parts audacious and foolish: he was going to make the colossal machine do a wheelie.
I did everything I could to lose my life but I think I’m a lucky man to be alive.
The Blackout Stunt
What happened next is the stuff of Butte legend. As Knievel gunned the engine and pulled back on the controls, the earthmover lurched upward. For a moment, he might have felt the thrill of success. But his stunt went horribly wrong. The raised shovel of the machine slammed into the main power line supplying electricity to the city. The resulting explosion of sparks plunged Butte and its surrounding neighborhoods into an immediate and total darkness. Knievel hadn't just performed a stunt; he'd inadvertently shut down an entire city. His employment with the Anaconda Mining Company ended on the spot.
A Glimpse of the Future
While the incident got him fired, it was a perfect, albeit unintentional, preview of the man he would become. The episode contained all the key elements of a future Evel Knievel event: a powerful machine, a blatant disregard for personal safety, a grand gesture for an unseen audience, and a spectacular, attention-grabbing outcome that affected thousands. It was his first truly public stunt, a chaotic dress rehearsal for a career spent turning the razor's edge between triumph and disaster into pure entertainment. The boy who blacked out Butte was on his way to becoming the man who would try to jump the Snake River Canyon, proving that even his earliest failures were bigger and bolder than most people's successes.