'Probably safer': What it was like when states had no speed limits

No highway speed limits? For some Nevada and Montana motorists with long memories, that's what made their states special.

As California deals with a proposal to remove speed limits through its Central Valley, there are those elsewhere in the West who remember what it was like to be happy leadfoots who didn't have to worry about speeding tickets.

Nevada and Montana were holdouts when it came to not having speed limits in sparsely populated, wide-open spaces. Some might say that was crazy.

"It was probably safer than it is now just because there weren't as many people," recalls Toni Mendive, 76, an archivist at the Northeastern Nevada Museum in the town of Elko. "There was just more common sense then."

As a result, Mendive said she doesn't recall driving a car any faster than 70 mph –  even though she legally could have gone faster. 

Some did. Elko newspaper publisher Warren "Snowy" Monroe became the stuff of legend when he raced an airplane about 300 miles from Elko to the capital of Carson City in days before the speed limit –  and won.

Speed limits have become as American as federal income taxes. Connecticut was likely the first to enact speed limits at the dawn of the automotive age in 1901. But in the rugged West, both Nevada and Montana clung to their independent ways until Congress, with President Richard Nixon's blessings, clamped down with a national speed limit in 1974 after the gasoline shortages.

It was the dreaded "double nickel" –  55 mph. 

While Nevada and Montana lost their policies of limitless highway speed, they did find a way around the federal policy. Both limited tickets to low-cost penalties that didn't penalize drivers' records. The crime wasn't deemed speeding. Rather, it was wasting energy.

A Montana newspaper, The Missoulian, which compiled a history of state's dealings with the speed limit, said the penalty was $5. Some drivers kept a wad of $5 bills in their glove compartments so if they were pulled over, they would be ready to pay the fine on the spot. In Nevada, the penalty was $15.

In 1995, when Congress removed the 55 mph speed limit, Montana took away its speed limit and went without once again, the Missoulian reported. But it was reinstated in 1999 after a state supreme court ruling, but set at a maximum of 75 mph. In both Nevada and Montana, the speed limit can now go as high as 80 mph.

Still, the age without a speed limit in Montana kindles nostalgia. Coming of age in Missoula, Gordon Noel said everyone drove fast. The goal was to just stay on the road. It didn't help that cars of that age, like the 1950 Chevrolet he started driving when he was 16, were far more primitive than those today. They didn't have safety systems, advanced suspensions and better tires.

"On a fast, straight stretch of road I could go 80 mph, but most of the time you didn't dare," said Noel, 77, author of a new memoir of growing up in the Big Sky Country State, "Out of Montana."  

Noel, a Harvard graduate who became a physician, said his dad drove even faster. 

"My father would say he needed to 'blow the carbon out' of his car. We would see how long it would take to get to 100 mph," said Noel, who now lives in Portland, Oregon. But at least he and dad were always able to stay focused on the road.

"We certainly didn't keep our eye on the speedometer because we were worried about the speed limit," he added.