By james art 
It takes a special kind of person to live in the fast lane, and for Steve Bohannon, that led to a life as an emergency medical doctor for 25 years, spending a decade at Daytona International Speedway as the track’s medical director, and traveling the world , to seek new and exciting adventures.
Although he and his wife, Lee, settled in Canyon City about five years ago, the journey here has been exciting.
Bohannon was born in Morocco as his father served in the Navy and by the time he was in the third grade the family had moved to Tripoli, Libya as his father was also an oil engineer and worked for Conoco. The family lived in Libya for five years, and Bohannon vividly remembers exploring Roman ruins, snorkeling and sailing in the Mediterranean, and traveling throughout Europe.
The family was urgently evacuated from Libya in 1967 during the Six-Day War, when war broke out between Israel and the Arab states.
“We weren’t supposed to go back then and we only got about half of our belongings,” he said.
The family lived in Texas after that and Bohannon attended school at Texas A&M and eventually was accepted to the University of Texas Medical School. He jumped at the chance to complete his studies in Daytona Beach, Florida, and was hooked. He accepted a position as an emergency physician at a level two trauma center in Daytona Beach after completing his residency and held that position for 25 years.
“It was a great way to practice medicine and it was state-of-the-art for trauma patients,” he said. “We had every specialist you can think of come in and help.”
Reinflating collapsed lungs, dealing with severed limbs and managing brain hemorrhages were just some of the daily tasks Bohannon dealt with, and it proved to be an environment in which he thrived.
“Looking back on it, I have no idea how I did it,” he said with a smile. “The burnout rate for an ER doctor in a busy hospital is usually about seven years, so I don’t know how I did. I guess I enjoyed the excitement because every day when you go to work, you have no idea what’s going to come in the door.
Over the years, he also worked with the county’s EMS system, which served 14 cities. In 2000, he was invited to serve as the Medical Director of Daytona International Speedway.
Bohannon played a key role in the Daytona 500 crash on February 18, 2001 that ultimately claimed the life of Dale Earnhardt and was the first doctor on the scene as he was on the back during the crash.
“The panelists were cutting the roof when I got there, so I automatically knew he was at least unconscious,” Bohannon said. “I went in the ambulance with him and a paramedic … to the trauma center in Halifax.”
At the trauma center, he continued efforts to revive Earnhardt along with a trauma surgeon and an anesthesiologist, but was forced to announce Earnhardt’s death to a crowd of assembled journalists shortly afterward.
It was a whirlwind decade as the track’s medical director, and Bohannon also served as director of two urgent care centers while working as a full-time emergency room physician.
Toward the end of his time at the trauma center, Bohannon began working as a locum tenens physician and traveled around the country wherever he was needed. He worked on an Indian reservation in Montana, ran the emergency room during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota and also spent time in Colorado, where the Centennial State quickly won his heart.
Although Florida has been home for several decades, Bohannon finally realized he was tired of the heat, humidity, hurricanes and fire ants and moved to Colorado in late 2019.
Life hasn’t necessarily slowed down for Bohannon, though.
Almost immediately, he and Lee became members of the Cañon City Geology Club, Colorado’s oldest nonprofit geology club. They also spent time hiking and exploring Colorado’s best peaks.
In 2023, Bohannon joined Fremont Search and Rescue because of his extensive mountain climbing experience, but found the team taught him more than he could have imagined.
“They taught me so much — I was into mountain climbing, but I didn’t like what these guys were doing,” he said of his teammates.
Bohannon served as part of the technical ropes team, but took his involvement a step further by re-establishing the SAR drone program. He had been flying drones for about seven years, and after receiving an FAA commercial drone license, Bohannon became the only drone pilot in the program.
“The drones we have are really old… so we need new drones. I will try to get subsidies for new drones,” he said.
Bohannon has already participated in several search and recovery missions, and while he hopes it will never be necessary, he is willing and ready to fly remote-controlled drones over the skies of Fremont County.
“As a doctor I had no free time, I worked so much that I couldn’t join clubs or charity activities,” he said. “So when we moved here, we wanted to join the community and do some things for the community.”
In addition to SAR and the Geology Club, Bohannon looks forward to spending time with his three children and grandson (with another on the way) and hopes to one day accomplish his goal of climbing the Seven Summits—the highest peaks on every continent . He has visited about half of the countries in the world and has big plans to continue his quest to visit them all.
However, he has chosen to call tiny Canyon City and the people who live here home.