Legendary Mint 400 Off-Road Race Returns to Las Vegas

Posted on: March 5, 2025, 12:46h. 

Last updated on: March 5, 2025, 12:46h.

Corey Levitan Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

Fifty-four years after it inspired Hunter S. Thompson’s classic novel, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” the Mint 400 remains the great American desert race. This weekend, it returns for its 40th run.

The big race on Saturday, March 8 will see approximately 135 drivers vie for victory in four laps around a 100-mile dirt track (for a total of 400 miles).

Taking place 45 miles southwest of Las Vegas in Primm, Nev., the event will also feature six smaller races throughout the weekend.

Making a Mint

The Mint 400 was the brainchild of Norm Johnson, PR director for the Mint casino hotel on Fremont Street downtown, who raced in the event from 1969 through 1982.

Designed for four-wheel vehicles (buggies, cars and trucks) and, until 1977, motorcycles, the off-road race initially followed a 400-mile dirt loop through the desert east and northeast of Las Vegas.

Johnson had envisioned the Mint 400 purely as promotional tool for the Mint’s annual deer hunt. Instead, it took on a life of its own.

For its second edition in 1969, Johnson enlisted the help of his famous driver friends and scrounged up a purse of $30K, growing the participant list exponentially.

Entrants in that year’s race included Indianapolis 500 winners Parnelli Jones, Al and Bobby Unser and Rick Mears, as well as off-road champions Mickey Thompson, Ivan Stewart and Jack Flannery.

Celebrity race fans James Garner and Steve McQueen showed up to watch.

Cultural Importance

The Mint 400 served as the catalyst for Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” The gonzo journalist only realized it was a novel after Sports Illustrated rejected his first draft as coverage of the race.

They had assigned him 250 words on who won and other race highlights. Instead, Thompson submitted 2,500 words that didn’t even name Parnelli Jones, who won the fourth Mint 400 in a Ford Bronco.

The race embodied the lawless energy that served as a fitting real-world grounding for Thompson’s mad, drug-fueled and largely fictionalized tale of two men searching the desert for the lost American dream.

Thompson wrote “Fear and Loathing” only four years after the hippies had staged their “summer of love” in San Francisco, failing to better society in any lasting way.

“We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave,” Thompson wrote. “So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

After Sports Illustrated rejected it, Thompson pitched the story to his friend Jann Wenner, the editor of Rolling Stone, who serialized it. The rest is literary history.

By the way, one of the pits on the modern-day Mint 400 racetrack is named the “Gonzo Pit.”

Finish Line & Rebirth

The future of the Mint 400 was jeopardized in 1988, when Mint owner Del Webb sold the resort to Jack Binion, who made it part of his Horseshoe Club. Indeed, a year later, Binion shut the event down, reportedly feeling that the race and its celebrations had a mostly negative impact on his casinos.

In 2008, after 18 years, the race was revived by a collaboration of General Tire and the Southern Nevada Off-Road Enthusiasts (SNORE). They sold it in 2011 to the Martelli Brothers, who moved the race to Primm, a once-hopping Nevada border town that in the past 20 years has pretty much emptied out.

Pimm’s closer proximity to open desert allowed a tighter, spectator-friendly course versus the sprawling Vegas loops. In addition, Bureau of Land Management land in the area was easier to secure than navigating Vegas’s urban sprawl and growing land-use restrictions. And Primm’s casinos (Buffalo Bill’s, the Primm Valley Resort and the recently shuttered Whiskey Pete’s) offered lodging and a midway vibe, replacing the Mint’s original role.

A parade featuring 125 of desert racing’s finest vehicles kicks off today (Wednesday) at 3 p.m. from Circus Circus to Mandalay Bay. Qualifying for the Primm short course will begin tomorrow (Thursday) morning. And a free Mint 400 Off-Road Festival will begin at 6 p.m. Thursday on Fremont Street East.

For tickets and information for Friday and Saturday’s races, visit, themint400.com.