Return of the Yellowstone buses

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January 1, 2008

David Scott The Rushville Republican Tue Jan 01, 2008, 05:30 PM EST

Former Rushville resident, David Scott, along with wife Kay and several other travel writers, participated in a summer press trip to celebrate the return of Yellowstone National Park’s historic “yellow buses.” The trip, sponsored by the Park County Wyoming Tourism Board and Xanterra Parks and Resorts, began and ended in Cody, Wyoming, the eastern gateway to America’s first national park. Cody is home to the well-known Buffalo Bill Historical Center. After a tour of the historical center and a night at the Cody rodeo, group members traveled in one of the historic buses from Cody to Yellowstone’s northeast entrance by way of the small mountain village of Cooke City.

The open-top 13-passenger buses, manufactured in the late 1930s by Cleveland-based White Motor Company, once transported visitors in several western national parks including Mt. Rainier, Grand Canyon, Glacier, Yosemite, and Yellowstone. The famous “Reds” have continued to operate in Glacier National Park after being refurbished several years ago. Nearly 100 of the buses were operating in Yellowstone by the end of the 1930s before visitors increasingly chose to travel to and through the park in their own vehicles. All but a few of the buses had been sold to private individuals by the 1960s. The distinctive yellow buses have now returned to their Yellowstone home following a fifty-year absence.

The eight buses currently operating in Yellowstone were purchased by park concessionaire, Xanterra Parks and Resorts, from a Skagway, Alaska tour company that had acquired the vehicles in the 1980s from various U.S. locations. Xanterra paid nearly $2 million for the purchase and refurbishment of the eight buses that were overhauled in Livonia, Michigan by Transglobal Design and Manufacturing. The refurbishment included substituting an automatic transmissions and a larger 5.4 liter gasoline engine. Each bus boasts a soft top that can be manually rolled back (with assistance from one or more of the passengers) to provide riders with an open-air journey through the park. Blankets are provided for cool weather trips in a park where it can snow in July. Xanterra will utilize the buses for a variety of tours that range from an hour to a full day with departures from several locations in the park.

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