Where did the bus come from?

It took me 10 seconds to find this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stampede_Trail#Bus_142

Well the most obvious answer would be that it was carried there by 100 million ants, seeing as buses as we know are not vehicles that can be driven.



Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. -Isaac Asimov

Back in 2009, someone who used to live in that bus posted here. IMDB keeps deleting stuff, but I saved the thread because it was interesting to hear the straight story from someone who was there. I'll paste the relevant part below:

Re: The Bus??

The Bus??
by video78 (Thu Oct 15 2009 01:50:34) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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So I've just finished watching this movie (where an ill-prepared city boy with far fetched fantasies under estimates the power of nature) and among the questions that came to mind was this....

How did the bus get to where it is??
And if it did get there by road- why can't Chris follow the road out of there after he get's stranded from failing to cross the river?

(He was stranded, wasn't he? I was led to believe this.)

Re: The Bus??
by pasdaj (Thu Oct 15 2009 17:10:56) Ignore this User | Report Abuse

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In the book it explained that a bit after Alaska became a state, a construction company put three junked buses and fixed it up with bunks and stoves, for their workers who were upgrading the trail to roads. A couple of years later, only 50 miles of road were built and no bridges, the project was haulted and the company left only one bus there.


by michael-hines-2 (Tue Oct 20 2009 13:06:05) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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The book was mistaken in relating how the bus came to be where Chris found it. I spent the summer of 1961 in that bus. My dad, Jess Mariner worked for Yutan Const and our family lived in Bus 142 and another green and white bus. The construction crew lived in two orange buses. When Yutan came out of the bush in the fall the axle of 142 broke and it was left right where it is now. The rest of the camp was taken back to Fairbanks. I have this on home movies and if I could download a picture on here I would show you what the bus looked like in 1961.

Chris crossed the river in the spring when it was not very deep, when he tried to cross it later in the summer the glacial runoff had made it into a much bigger river.

Re: The Bus??
by nigelgtx (Thu Oct 22 2009 09:14:25) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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Cool story. What was your family doing there in the middle of nowhere?

Re: The Bus??
by michael-hines-2 (Thu Nov 5 2009 10:55:53) Ignore this User | Report Abuse

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My dad was the heavy duty mechanic for Yutan Construction. They were building the road from Lignite to Stampede. It was an awesome summer, if I'd have seen the future I would have scratched my name in the side of the bus...but at the time my dad would have not been pleased!
Re: The Bus??
by palisade-1 (Thu Nov 5 2009 12:11:32)

UPDATED Sat Jan 2 2010 05:56:22

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You would probably find the documentary film Call of the Wild interesting. It features interviews and information with numerous people connected to the McCandless story that weren't part of the Penn movie. It is available here:http://tifilms.com/wild/call_intro.htm One extended interview, with a lot of period photos included, is with a chap named Steve (? don't remember his last name) who, with his brother-in-law and trapping partner, spent winters in the bus from around 1978 to 1988. The two of them re-furnished some items in the bus (put in the beds and the stove that were there when McCandless was there), and made it their winter base of operations. There was no engine in the bus, so they used the front compartment to store food for their dog team. There was both video footage and still photos of the bus when they were there.

I recommend the documentary; it fleshes out the McCandless story and adds a lot of new information and visuals of his early life ( his home in California and Virginia,his high school coach and college roommate, and much more). You'd probably find it of special interest because of its segment on the history of the bus.

Re: The Bus??
by michael-hines-2 (Wed Nov 11 2009 05:40:29) Ignore this User | Report Abuse
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So they took out the bed in back and stove and carried/put different ones in? I know my dad is the one who put the originals in, we had a homestead in Fairbanks and he did the work there. In 1961 it had a double bed in the back and bunk beds on the side, maybe they needed to be replaced after 15-20 years.
Re: The Bus??
by palisade-1 (Sun Nov 29 2009 07:49:25)


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I just had a look at that part of the documentary again. It appeared that when the two trappers fixed up the bus (early 70's) there were no beds in it. They hauled a double bed and a barrel stove out there by dogsled. There was no sign in the few old photos of bunk beds -- it looked like there was built-in shelving along the side. So the bed that McCandless used was likely the one that the two trappers hauled in.