How the heck did an Evel Knievel museum wind up in northeast Kansas?

Peering out toward a muddy race track in Hutchinson, Kan., the small boy sat amongst a sea of onlookers at a neatly filed line of 10 Kenworth trucks. Two sets of wooden ramps leaned against the sides of the two outermost red-and-black trucks, creating takeoff and landing areas.

A man attired in white, red and blue leathers rode a Harley-Davidson XR-750 motorbike up and down the length of the crowd, performing wheelies and placing his feet on the leather seat of his bike.

After a couple of laps up and down the row of trucks, the rider lined himself up at the far end of the track before speeding toward the nearest ramp and flying over the row of trucks as the watching crowd cheered. Landing with a thud and a quick stabilization with his left leg, the rider made it to the opposite ramp unharmed.

That was the moment a 4-year-old boy fell in love with Evel Knievel, the famous stunt performer who inspired a generation of kids with his daredevil jumps and horrific crashes throughout the late 1960’s and well into the 1970’s.

Some 46 years after that jump, that inspired 4-year-old child, Mike Patterson, co-founded and opened the Evel Knievel Museum in Topeka.

With co-owners Lathan McKay and Jim Caplinger, Patterson has invested upwards of $3 million into the museum, which sits underneath Historic Harley Davidson, just south of the Kansas Expocenter.

Topeka seems like a strange place for an Evel Knievel museum, no? Perhaps it should be built in Butte, Mont., Knievel’s hometown. Or in Las Vegas, where he famously attempted to jump the fountains at Caesar’s Palace on a Triumph Bonneville T120, a stunt in which he didn’t stick the landing and wound up in a hospital for a month.

“Biggest reason, really, is Lathan collected ultimately Big Red, which is the Mack truck that Evel hauled his show around with, and it was a very iconic, bright red truck,” said Bruce Zimmerman, director of the museum.

Parked in the middle of the museum, the huge red-white-and-blue semi is the centerpiece of this shrine. One of the most famous trucks to ever tour the roads of America, ‘Big Red’ is the crown jewel of McKay’s collection.

Were it not for Big Red, the museum might've been situated in New Jersey instead.

And this is where legendary pianist and songwriter Jerry Lee Lewis enters the picture.

Between the museum's three co-owners, McKay is the ultimate collector of Knievel artifacts and memorabilia. When he first acquired Big Red, both the exterior and interior were in terrible condition. With fading and peeling paint, Knievel’s private living quarters were dusty and run down.

McKay was originally to have the truck restored in New Jersey, but the progress was far too slow for McKay’s liking. Around the same time, McKay had business dealings with a son-in-law of Lewis’; he knew that Lewis was a big fan of motorbikes and recently had a Harley Davidson repaired.

Asking Lewis’ son-in-law if his father-in-law would have any recommendations as to where to get Big Red refurbished, they were put in touch with Patterson, the third-generation owner of Historic Harley Davidson in Topeka.

Big Red was shipped from the northeast to the Midwest, and Patterson and his crew went to work.

"We involved over 90 individuals and local businesses in the restoration of the truck,” Zimmerman said, “so we could do the things that we could do, and then we would contract out the things that we didn't specialize in."

The truck is now a near-replica. Knievel’s former artist, George Sedlak, was brought in from his home in Illinois to help repaint Big Red to its former glory. Knievel’s office space — including a bathroom and collection of his former leathers — is completely recovered, including original artifacts such as a notebook and several decorations. The driver's cabin is also restored, as is the storage space at the back of the truck, which currently houses Knievel’s original wooden ramps, as well as one of many original bikes the museum owns.

The museum is much more than just Big Red, though. Situated on two floors, the first floor offers a timeline of Knievel’s history, including his most famous jumps (and crashes).

This section houses the XR-750 bike that Patterson had seen Knievel jump on at the Kansas State Fair in 1971. The museum has also collected several other original bikes and leathers, including a pair of XR-750s ridden at Kings Island, Ohio, in 1972, and London in 1975.

On the upper floor, more displays, including original clothing and helmets, are surrounded by several interactive activities and a theater showing movies such as “Viva Knieval.”

"It's amazing to us the power of Hollywood,” Zimmerman said. “In (Viva Knieval), there are several things that get confusing in Evel's story. The announcer says to the crowd that he's broken every bone in his body, and everyone believes that. He's broken about 40 bones, some of them more than once."

Just outside the theater, a large display cabinet houses all of the merchandise that Knievel sold during his years of fame: bicycles, pinball machines, ceiling fans. This was where Knievel truly made his money.

"It's amazing how many men, late 40s to early 60s, walk up, look at these toys, and make the winding motion it took to operate it, and they're explaining it to their kid or their grandkid," Zimmerman said.

The main attraction of the upstairs area is a virtual reality stunt-jump setup. Museum visitors — riders — sit on a motorbike, plop on a headset and experience what it’s like to jump over 15 police cars. The original jump was performed in Topeka by Doug Danger in 2016, on the same XR-750 that Knievel used at Kings Island in 1972.

The experience is so realistic that a supervisor must be present whenever anybody sits on the bike, because people often lean too far on the bike and risk falling off.

The last large piece of memorabilia that viewers come across is the Skycycle X-2 steam-powered rocket, which was used — unsuccessfully — to jump across Snake River Canyon in Idaho in 1974.

Still busted up at the front, the X-2 sits on its original launch ramp, with dirt from the launch site surrounding the rocket.

The museum is a shrine to Knievel’s high-adrenaline career and the love that people still have for him.

One of Knievel's most famous quotes, uttered after his career had ended and he had settled back into his normal life as Bobby Knievel, is etched on one of the walls of the museum. It perfectly reflects how one man could generate enough memorabilia to fill an entire museum, not to mention enough support for people to visit 50 years later:

"I created Evel Knievel, and then he sort of got away from me."

This story was originally published June 26, 2018 at 3:50 PM.