So despite all the contradictory indications - comic books, action figures, pinball machines, movies, everything that comes with legend status - Evel Knievel was not a hero by his own standards.

Growing Up...
Robert Craig Knievel was born in the mining city of Butte, Montana on October 17, 1938. "The Richest Hill on Earth" had an attitude of its own. The men worked hard and played harder, their women worried and the common rule was...well, there weren't really any rules, as long as you worked hard. It didn't take long for young Bobby to start flourishing as a character in this kind of wide-open, anything goes atmosphere. And it didn't take long for people to notice.

Knievel started racing around Butte's grisly, mining-scarred landscapes on his bicycle at an early age. He credits his experience of seeing Joey Chitwood's automotive show at Clark Park for planting in him the seed that would grow into his career as a motorcycle daredevil. But it would be years before he'd come to realize that it would be his calling.

Always a thrill seeker with a cunning edge, young Bobby Knievel found himself in trouble early and often, but never without learning a valuable lesson. As a young boy, he would outsell most of the local newspaper boys, many much older than him, on the busy corners of the uptown, by stretching the truth of the papers' headlines. He'd be long gone before the customer realized he'd been conned. The cons grew as did Knievel until he eventually found himself as a high school dropout with an unsavory yet inescapable choice after a hub cap theft bust: go to prison or join the Army. His stint in the service straightened him out several fold. Upon his return to The Mining City, he married Linda Bork, they had their first child, Kelly, and Knievel started to explore legitimate ways to make a living and raise a family. Times were hard, but despite the lack of income, Knievel always showed brilliance and promise in his ventures.

Athletic Prowess
One of Butte's many nicknames is The City of Champions, due to the high level of success of its sporting teams and athletes. An exceptional athlete in his own right, Knievel tried to make a go at professional hockey. After a short stint with the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League, he returned to his hometown to form the Butte Bombers semi-professional team. Knievel was the team's star forward, as well as owner, manager, lockerroom janitor, etc. Half of his team was made up of players from the University of Montana in Missoula and Montana State in Bozeman, leaving only his young, pretty wife Linda to tend goal at practices for him. Despite these challenges, the team was the most successful hockey squad of which Butte had ever seen the likes. Even so, low attendance at the games eventually forced the team to fold, but not before Knievel's Bombers hosted the Czechoslovakia Olympic team at the Butte Civic Center in 1960. The Bombers lost the game, but the 5,000-seat stadium was filled to its capacity.

Among his other athletic achievements, Knievel was an outstanding pole-vaulter at Butte High School. He pole vaulted and ran the 220-yards for the U.S. Army track team during his service. He was also an excellent ski jumper, winning the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association title in 1959. Other sports in which Knievel dabbled during his youth were boxing, golf, baseball, football, basketball and even some rides in a few local rodeos.

Knievel Goes to Washington
The Joey Chitwood experience may have planted the seed that helped Knievel decide he wanted to be a stuntman, but something happened in 1961 that was equally if not more important in forming the persona that would become "Evel."

During this period in his life when the young man was trying on many different hats in an attempt to find his calling, Knievel started a hunting outfitting service called Sure-Kill. As a man who always insisted on walking the walk he talked, Knievel found himself right in the middle of a conservation debate between Montana's hunting guides and outfitters and the National Park Service. There had been a long-standing practice of park rangers slaughtering the excess elk numbers in Yellowstone National Park, giving the meat away to regional Indian tribes, homeless shelters and food banks. In 1961, the Yellowstone herd numbered over 10,000, calling for a drastic reduction of some 5,000 animals.

The guides and outfitters were demanding that the excess elk be transplanted to areas in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, rather than senselessly slaughtered in unsportsmanlike fashion and given away. Knievel made himself his new profession's spokesman and hitchhiked from Butte to Washington D.C. - along with a six-point trophy elk antler rack – to protest the cause to the Kennedy administration's top officials. He was amazed when he found himself on the front page of the Washington Post, his name all over the media and eventually, himself, face to face with JFK's Administrative Assistant, Mike Manatos and then Secretary of the Interior Stuart Udall. The Department of Interior called off the elk slaughter in Yellowstone and started to transplant the animals to national forest locations in the area shortly after Knievel's trip to the Capitol. A massive elk rack and an even greater amount of self-confidence and guts got Knievel into America's executive offices and his cause the attention it demanded.