WASHINGTON (7News) — An abandoned city bus that once lured people on sometimes deadly pilgrimages to Alaska’s backcountry can now safely be viewed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks while it undergoes preservation work.
The long-abandoned Fairbanks city bus became famous in the 1996 book “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, and a 2007 Sean Penn-directed movie of the same name. Both were about Christopher McCandless's nomadic journey across the United States and eventual death in the bus in 1992.
The 1940s-era bus, sometimes called “Bus 142” or “The Magic Bus,” was used to house employees by the Yutan Construction Co. when it built an access road about 25 miles west of the Parks Highway, the main thoroughfare between Anchorage and Fairbanks. The bus was abandoned in 1961 and had become an emergency shelter for those using the backcountry to recreate or hunt.
McCandless, a 24-year-old from northern Virginia, had written in a journal about living in the bus for 114 days, right up to his death. The swollen banks of the Teklanika River prevented McCandless from hiking back out of the area and it is believed he died of starvation.
He had graduated six years earlier from W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax County.
After two deaths and 15 rescue missions since 2009, the state removed the bus last year for public safety reasons. It had been a beacon for people wanting to recreate McCandless's steps.
The Alaska National Guard said the bus was removed using a heavy-lift helicopter.
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The bus is being preserved at the University of Alaska Fairbanks for eventual outdoor display at the Museum of the North, also in Fairbanks.
It's in a heated, secure space that has environmental controls. It also has an elevated observation space that allows anyone to view the bus for free on weekdays. The bus is expected to remain there through the end of the academic year.
Preparing the bus for outdoor is an extensive process, said Angela Linn, senior collections manager of ethnology and history at the Museum of the North.
“One of the very first things we’re going to do is to document, really systematically, all the graffiti that you can see on the inside and the outside of the bus. This is a really important part of the last 30 years of the bus,” she said.
Holes cut in the roof and floor of the bus to allow a helicopter to ferry it out of the woods must be repaired, Linn said, and the bus is riddled with bullet holes.
“Some of them are kind of dangerous. The shots that come from inside leave these jagged holes, so we don’t want anybody to be injured when this does eventually go on exhibit,” she said.
Telling the other history of the bus will be part of the permanent display.
“That’s one of the things that we want to explain to people and show people, that there is a lot more to the history of the bus and the story of the bus than just those 114 days that McCandless is associated with it,” Linn said.
